


Of All Evil I Deem You Capable

by clumsycopy



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Attempts To Make Coding Look Cool, Breathplay, Dominant Kylo Ren, F/M, Face-Fucking, Fisting, Hand & Finger Kink, Inappropriate Use of Hardware, Inappropriate Use of Lightsabers, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo Ren Has Big Sexy Hands, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mind Manipulation, Not a Slow Burn But Perhaps Medium Heat, Possessive Kylo Ren, Praise Kink, Reader-Insert, Size Kink, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, this is where the fun begins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 09:40:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25847491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clumsycopy/pseuds/clumsycopy
Summary: Years of devotion to working in the First Order finally land you in your dream position, a Ship Operating System (SOS) engineer assigned to support TIE pilots in real-time while they ravage the skies. A bold, rash decision on your very first day of work puts you in the crosshair of Kylo Ren.What will become of you now that your fragile future lies amidst his hands?
Relationships: Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Reader, Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/You, Kylo Ren/Reader, Kylo Ren/You
Comments: 55
Kudos: 139





	1. It's You

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Keeping Your Promise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23268310) by [MJRen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MJRen/pseuds/MJRen). 
  * Inspired by [Fix Your Attitude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5961706) by [kassanovella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kassanovella/pseuds/kassanovella). 
  * Inspired by [Where the Body Burns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25492669) by [ElmiDol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElmiDol/pseuds/ElmiDol). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bold, rash decision on your very first day of work puts you in the crosshair of Kylo Ren.

Each slow second that you wait for the colossal blast door to open drains your heart, nullifies the air in your lungs; you’re unsure of how you still have strength to remain standing. Four years of religious dedication to working and honing your skills hauled you up the tech roles of the First Order until you landed in the one that permeated your mind since you set foot in the academy: a Ship Operating System (SOS) engineer. Now you’d be able to revel and savor the fruits of your labor, to have outside validation that you are worth something.

At least, this is what you tell yourself with each new goal you set in your career. Time after time you remain satisfied for a week, maybe two, and then another milestone comes up, another nearly unachievable feat set by yourself that reinforced your constant panic of falling behind, of not being good enough, of doubting yourself every step of the way.

_ Wonder how long I’ll last this round.  _

A loud clamor hauls you out of the hollow abyss of your thoughts. Like curtains, the impenetrable doors open, allowing you to scope out the place that you had fantasized about since you graduated from the Academy. An officer calls out to the group, guiding you inside the sprawling chamber. Walking in a neat row, you step into the first day of your new life, yearning to commit every detail and every thought to memory.

The area spans for hundreds of meters, rivaling the size of a docking bay. A ceiling rises tall, high enough for a Jet Trooper to hover around with ample room to spare. Pill lights adorn the panels attached to the walls, extending inward, for so long that the room itself seems to be an infinite illusion as if two mirrors face each other. 

The sheer scale of what awaits you shrinks your ego to space dust; to finish the job, a viewport showcases a canvas of stars and grinds away whatever lingering sense of self importance, hammering down how you're nothing but a blip in the mesh of space-time. Of course, being that you're standing on the ground level of Starkiller Base means that the sight granted by the gigantic screen is a projection that lags one nanosecond behind; you're no more than a picture of a woman looking at a picture. 

Your domed, black helmet lets you gawk at every quadrant of the chamber while shielding from prying eyes. Not that anyone is looking; all officers  _ in loco  _ delve into their work, tuning out any stimuli that don't originate from their datapads or the crawling text on the viewport. The dull sameness of the uniforms conceals most identifying features of the officers, even considering their body language. A brief scan of the room is not enough for you to find your roommate amidst the present workers, but you vow to keep an eye out and find her if you have the time.

Or maybe she’ll find you. Spaced out rows of individual workstations span around a dais in the middle of the room, arching larger and larger as they grow distant; like ripples in a pond. 

An array of thin, white circles lights up on the obsidian floor, projecting a hologram with the faces of each new arrival, guiding the taciturn group into their assigned spots. The projection turns green as you assume your designated place and a hexagram with your name and overall performance score floats above your helmet. Where you stand, right in the middle of the front row, bestows you a great view of the chamber, letting your eyes roam and take in the near-silent flow of working officers while you wait for further instructions. The viewport now casts the image of far away stars throughout its length, of TIE fighters flying in chaotic entropy, rushing in and out of the boundaries of the screen. At the same time, numbers and labels and alerts float along each ship displayed on the monitor, a dump of information you’re enraptured in trying to understand. 

Once all of you are standing in the right slots, a different officer crosses the length of the massive chamber, marching your way with calculated, economic steps. She's tall, standing out as the only helmetless individual, sporting broad shoulders and a head with cropped, dark hair that sits in tight curls over her skull.

The timbre of her voice is lithe yet sharp as she addresses the small group of earnest officers, eyes lingering on your performance scores:

“Welcome. I’m Sergeant Teris. Not many of you made it up to our sector this quarter. That’s good. Our standards are set higher and higher each cycle, as you all know we want to make sure we’re selecting the most capable individuals for the job. You'll find the hierarchy of this department is differentiated from anything you've ever experienced in the First Order. Each officer in this room is a software engineering consultant with full credentials to perform any tasks that this job requires as long as they're within the bounds of what our systems allow.” Teris’ gaze flickers to you for a second; then she glances at each new engineer.

Once the ensures all newly appointed officers are squirming under her gaze, she continues, “There are no ranks here aside from mine. I'm your supervisor and above me is General Hux. If you have made it here, you’ve proved over and over that you’re capable of performing with the excellency demanded by our Supreme Leader. We trust you to see your duties to completion with no flaws whatsoever. If you fail, then… well, we should not dwell on that scenario. Remember, you’re the last line of defense against a cyber-attack; a single error of yours can take down the brave officers that are out there fighting for the supremacy of the First Order. Now, you'll meet your assigned mentors that will be responsible to brief you about the ins and outs of our sector. I look forward to seeing the impact that each of you will have. I’d wish you luck, but I don’t think you’ll need it.” She turns away and resumes her work, walking towards a group of officers who are huddled near the massive screen, analyzing a cluster of spaceships.

Her words are still floating in your mind, the grandiosity of the job you’re about to assume still hasn’t dawned on you. Agitation pulses in your chest, after years of hard work, studying and full dedication into your professional life so you could get to this point you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself now that you’ve made it. The looming presence of the next goal to attain, the thrill of running away from the burning embers of failure is what had fueled you for most of your life. An upwards climb that you One by one the new officers are approached by a more experienced colleague, until you’re one of the few ones left. Never have you felt more grateful for your uniform than at that moment, the all-black assemble projects an image of calm, collected confidence, hiding the unquiet jitters of your body.

In the blink of an eye you miss the moment someone starts talking to you. 

“Hello," he salutes, "I'm Alen and I will be your assigned mentor for the first 2 weeks, responsible to acclimate you to our stack. Today we are deploying live patches to a set of active TIE ships. Looking forward to see your work.” He waves a hand, motioning you to follow him, not looking back to see if you actually are. His tone is neither malicious nor welcoming, but the tone of someone who expects excellence from his peers and has no qualms about criticizing work that is not up to the benchmark.

“This is your workstation. Onboarding should be minimal; enter your credentials and most of the tools should be familiar to you already. Then, query the production DB and cherry-pick one available TIE ship to monitor. After that, it's all yours, I'm certain you'll know what to do.” His own desk sits beside yours, screens lit up with long streams of information scrolling through the monitor. He takes a seat, activating the secondary console of his helmet and diving right into his work; the speed of his movements provides you a brief idea of what standard you are compared against.

Not wanting to miss out, eager to over deliver, you make quick work of sitting down, of letting the hovering chair mold to your body, starting by entering your corp username and password into the console. The waiting time is virtually non-existent, which startles you for a moment, as you had anticipated a few seconds to agonize over your performance. 

A weight crushes your lungs, anxiety burns at your stomach while you start firing up the starter applications that are present on the desktop. The syntax of the commands is similar to ones you've already worked before; after running the "--help" add-on, you familiarize yourself with the coding guidelines of the SOS department. A query returns an extensive list of active ships, along with essential information on their status, position and other parameters.

_ This doesn’t make sense. I can’t fetch anything useful about this ship. Why does it have administrator clearance into our system? _

“Alen?” you call out, “There’s no mission attached to this TIE ship. Why have we authorized a rogue ship to fly with no real-time monitoring deployed?” Most of the diagnostics you attempt to run are cut short. A bold, large, red string of letters flashes in your monitor, 'CONNECTION REFUSED', it glares, repeated countless times in your console. Both of your hands curl into a tight fist, crunching the detailed seams of your gloves, fingers digging into your palms. 

“That’s to be expected. The ships are ordered by rank first in our database, and while the data is anonymized, it’s trivial to assume that a high ranking officer has a custom build up and running. Not all ships on the field are tied to a mission ID.” He chews on a ration bar, eyes snapping back to his work, oblivious to your indignation. 

An incredulous huff escapes your throat. Whoever that reckless user is, they possess a harmful combo of a high security level access and a low, quite non-existent coverage of shielding software for their customized operating system. The new set of commands you feed in the terminal should have been littered with typos due to the nauseating speed in which you type, but they're not. Instead they glitch for a whole different reason. "I can't ping their ship to run diagnostics. The network is not down, is it?"

He raises an eyebrow in disbelief. Composing himself, he answers: "No, the TIE must have been manually disconnected to refrain it from getting automatic updates pushed into it."

“Manually disconnected? From our network? It’s a matter of time before the Resistance or whatever else they call themselves hacks into that ship. How did it get to this point? I’m fixing this.” The urgency that blared inside your mind before pales to the surge of desperation that lurks inside you. If the Resistance has any measurable chances of invading the First Order’s network because of a flaw in the Ship Operating Systems department and you do nothing about it, you might as well ask to be demoted. What else would you be good for?

"Are you certain you're diverting your efforts into a valid task? Do you have clearance to take control of the ship? If you don't, then it's out of your scope. I'd suggest you to switch to an actionable work item," he advises between keystrokes.

"I don't know yet if I can take over that ship, but I'm about to figure that out." The terminal messages taunt you once more, ‘Error: read-only access permitted’.  _ Oh, I don’t think so. _

Any words Alen has to say next are filtered out by your brain once you tune your focus back onto the task at hand. Your hands glide on the enterprise datapad, splitting the screen in four sectors: two for the terminals, two for the code editors. The fifth sector, the error log is routed to the transmissor on your helmet, producing a blinking red cursor at the corner of your field of view.

As the loading bar grows, each new row of pixels disrupts the rhythm of your heart. With live programming there are no second chances, if an issue is not fixed on the first try the pilot’s life might be the price to pay. In the rare circumstances of a non-mortal failure, the responsible engineer is demoted, reassigned to droning mind-deteriorating work in the depths of the bureaucratic sectors of the First Order in departments so outdated that they’d still use the former Empire’s tech stack.

Alen's messages pop up on your screen as he wastes his time trying to convince you to stop, deliberate and reassess what you're about to do. You ought to have muted the chat application, but you don't have the heart to ignore your mentor. Between the sparse slits of free-time when a new resource is loading, you keep him updated on your progress.

The messages pile up, notification bubbles popping and popping; after a few seconds you mute them out so they don't distract you any longer. Surely he’d understand, you wouldn’t be surprised if he does the same to you on another occasion. You're working on the deep layers of the operating system now, without the practicalities offered by the services near the top of the stack. No more autocomplete, live recompiling, linter and formatter, all that stands behind you and a successful foray is a console and your capacity to render and execute flawless code on the fly.

Each minute that trickles by your fingers urges you to think harder, write write write an essential, but still functional script that stands well enough on its own to be kept and maintained by your peers on the codebase. All that is left now is starting and retaining a conn request to the culprit TIE fighter; by the state of things you'll need to resort to the base communication protocols, post each command by hand. You split your code in shards, encapsulating them in an array of messages.

When you press ‘send’, your body remembers to breathe again. The command runs to completion, just not the way you expected; while the changes in the unsecure ship are instant, it freezes the database for an instant, blaring a message for all to see ‘INVALID ACCESS ON TERMINAL #7835 - FORCED UPDATE PUSHED TO 15129#’.

Sergeant Teris walks to stand beside your desk, splaying a hand over your terminals. “Officer, step back, the pilot of that TIE Silencer has the necessary credentials to customize their ship as they see fit."

You crane your neck to look up at your superior, twisting your chair to face her head on."It’s done now. I fixed it. That ship was a time bomb waiting to blow up on us. I've mitigated the threat, by injecting a wrapper that pushed the changes in staggered commits, as not to jeopardize their flight. The pilot should have noticed no changes whatsoever in the responsiveness of their ship."

Annoyance crosses her features. Her shoulders rise and fall when she sighs, pinning her forearms to her lower back as she begins walking back and forth around your workstation. "What you are saying is... that you've had  _ unauthorized  _ access to a superior officer's property?" Her frown is deep, eyebrows pinched together, eyes fuming with displeasure.

By now you are sure you ought to regret every decision made after breakfast. But you can’t, not when you know you acted with the long-term impacts in mind. “Sergeant, regardless of who that pilot is, their custom board operating system possessed all the right flaws to be a dangerous endpoint, ripe for the exploitation of the Resistance. 

Why would someone get special treatment when they’re jeopardizing the integrity of our systems with unchecked, outdated code and pure disregard for security protocols? It took me no time to override their build, imagine what else the Resistance could be able to do if they searched hard enough?”

The sergeant smiles, teeth bared in a mocking display, amused at the cluelessness of your overtly technical tirade. “You should care, officer. You’ve disrupted Commander Ren’s flight mid-air. As you can see on the tracker,” she points a finger at the flickering red light on the plasma screen, “he deployed a landing sequence back to Starkiller. ETA 5 minutes.”

Blood drains out of your face, carrying away with it the warmth of your skin; your features paralyzed in a cross between a grimace and an expression of utter confusion. No, that cannot be right. Of all TIE ships in the galaxy, how could you have hand-picked the one belonging to the bloodthirsty, brutal man that killed friend and foe alike? Word had spread around that people who displease him are met with an instantaneous salutation of a lightsaber hilt to the stomach. Or heart. Or mouth, as a radar technician had murmured one time at lunch.

It takes you a long second to recover your voice, to remember how to breath and string together a coherent thought. "What- what should I do?"

"I will ping General Hux for an emergency meeting. You will wait right here," she points to your chair, no longer looking at you as she swipes her fingers over her datapad. Red holograms flicker in and out of the transmitter on her wrist until the shapes settle into a view of a desk and a man who looks ready to pulverize the person who interrupted his workflow. The dire conversation that happens next is not privy to your eyes as Sergeant marches away, leaving you in solitude to dwell with your thoughts and stare at your keyboard. 

The nearest row of coworkers steal a curious glance at you, but still keep their minds trained in their own assignments.

“Prepare for arrival.” Sergeant Teris steps near the entrance, snapping her hands to her sides.

Sounds dwindle down until the remaining disturbances come from the glinting panels of the workstations and to you even those seem quieter than usual, lifeless machinery cowering from the wrath of Commander Ren. A communal shudder afflicts each officer in the area; backs straighten, uniforms are tended to, hats adjusted to a standard-compliant position to hopefully pass through the scrutinizing gaze of the masked figure that haunts everyone but its master. The room falls silent, most unquiet eyes flickering every other minute to the blast door.

It slides open.

Kylo Ren saunters into the room, long cape undulating behind in response to his alluring, calculated movements. The span of his shoulders is impressive, for a moment you wonder if his clothes are tailored to exaggerate his physique, but you're wrong, his body is the unadulterated artwork draped by the thick fabric of his garments. A belt loops around his midsection, accentuating the rectangular shape of his figure and securing the first of many layers of clothing in place. His hand hovers at his side, fingers twitching with the ferocious need to ignite his weapon. 

From your point of view, you lie, tell yourself you're going to be fine, be safe as long as you stay in the far away corner, wishing you could leap through the wall and fall into the closest sanitation tunnel. What if he's not as dangerous, as violent as you’ve been told? Maybe your eyes are deceiving you, using the countless rumors that trickle through the cafeteria's constant bustle to fuel your terror. As he draws closer, you realize the naïve stupidity in trying to diminish his behemoth proportions, watching as his figure towers over the rows of technicians.

Kylo gifts the courtesy of letting the guilty party confess, despite the knowledge that he can take the answer whenever he wants. He revels in seeing the fleeting look of terror as people admit their failures, in hearing their panicking thoughts while they wonder which second would be the last; the power and control over someone else’s pathetic life exhilarating him. The fumes of despair exhaled by the crowd of uneasy officers are almost visible to his eyes and are much more noticeable through his bond with the Force. 

Guilty or not, few people can remain collected in his presence, an axiom he takes pleasure in maintaining. As he stalks to the center of the half-circular room, he probes each mind present, a single puncture with the Force, enough to terrorize and ensure their compliance. 

He waits.

Locking your workstation takes two keystrokes that are ingrained in your muscle memory; unease rears its head, a creature ready to chew you from the inside out, but you tame the beast, even if it’s for a mere moment. Nevertheless it’s a moment long enough for you to stand, pushing the immeasurable weight of the chair away in your haste to rise to attention. It seems to you that most people in the vicinity lose their breath, faces twisting in minute spasms as if their brains are being drilled and probed by an unseen entity.

Keeping your posture proud and tall is a gargantuan task, you’d rather bolt to the door and that’s the single intrusive thought that crosses your mind,  _ run run run  _ .

The crowd behaves as a hive, moving in traumatized synchrony; gaze trailing after the deliberate, purposeful steps of Kylo Ren. Behind the pristine uniforms and strangling hierarchy and stoic facade of the First Order, the present humans and aliens are reduced to prey, minds locked into fight or flight; they would scurry out of the blast door in the blink of an eye if they had the opportunity. Instead they endure, unmoving as statues, content not to intervene if it meant they would be spared the brunt of punishment. 

Internally you bristle, firm in your conviction that you had taken the appropriate course of action: removing a security flaw, regardless if it was caused by an higher up, in fact, despite it being caused by someone who you were sure had brutalized whoever had tried to bring it up before.

Still, your confidence is not enough to stop you from shuddering along with the echoes produced by Commander Ren’s looming steps. Each rise and fall of his feet ripples on the sleek reflective black tiles, reverbing inside your skull. The rushing sound of your arrhythmic heart threatens to drown the ambiance, the range of what your ears can capture diminish until all you hear is a muted, crackling noise. 

The mere proximity of his presence steals your breath, crushing your windpipe hard enough that you fear you'll asphyxiate to death under your helmet. Even so the protection of your own mask is a relief, your eyes are free to roam, feral and fearful, your mouth is free to pant in a futile attempt to catch your breath, the sound of your own panicked, choked rasps fogging the inside of the plasticast of your visor.

Kylo Ren struts to your workstation, slow and silent for someone of such stature.

Your hand coils tight around your other wrist, palms slick with sweat under the soft leather gloves. The wet, strangled contractions of your throat sound too loud as you try again to swallow another lump. Respectful to your training, you lift your head-- even if your face is covered--to stare a superior officer in the eye, as protocol dictates. The rumors are wrong. Kylo Ren is not  _ big  _ . He’s massive, colossal, a monument of flesh and ire, taller and stronger than he has any right to be; his form pervades most of your field of view and fear jolts down your spine as you compare your sizes. 

The thought of the damage he could inflict with nothing but his large palms sobers you right up. Maybe you’re suffering from fear-induced delusions, but a buzz ignites on the surface of your skin, the effects of his full, undivided attention manifesting into reality. A gentle wetness pools into your underwear, terminating your heartbeat for a moment.  _ Why am I- _

With a wave of his hand your chair is catapulted to the side, crashing into the unfortunate officers to your left. 

Your heart rattles against your ribcage, fear flowing as freely as your blood while you count down the seconds until you suffer the same fate. The single solace you allow yourself to dwell on is the thought that your code is secure and safe in the thousand clusters of the First Order. The same could not be said of the several panels that have met their demise at the end of the Commander's weapon. You pitied the engineers who had to clean up his messes. Even if Kylo obliterates this whole sector of the base, your code will still remain intact. You, on the other hand, might not.

The slotted chrome engravings of his mask forces you to face your distorted reflection as you search for a glimpse of eye-contact. To no one's surprise your search fails, finding nothing but a terrifying muzzle that spares no hint of the true appearance of its owner. The black carbon of his mask plays tricks on your eyes; a material so dark that it appears to fizzle with virtual specs of TV static. The void where his eyes should be calls out to you, trapping you in their allure. Your legs quake, thighs trembling beneath the sharp, ironed fabric of your immaculate uniform. You look down, safe under the protection of your helmet--he can’t see through it, that would be impossible--your gaze falls to the tips of his boots that jut out from under the hem of his robes. 

An invisible hand grips your chin, tilting your head upwards, obligating you to stare at the expressionless, mock face of Kylo Ren’s mask.

His voice is more electronic than human, synthetic and emotionless. The tone he chooses to use is clipped, impatient as if talking demands him a tremendous effort, the use of words a foreign act, when he'd rather speak through his weapon. His shoulders sway, cape flowing as the span of his back straightens, right hand thumbing the hilt of his lightsaber. In his full height he looks down, intricate disguise tilting delicately towards your face.

"It's you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah shit here we go again. I’ve been wanting to write again for Kylo in ages, and this fic slowly sprouted in my mind. I’ve been reading much more during the past months, and I feel grateful to know so many fantastic authors that inspire me day after day with their work. This is my first time trying to write about life in the First Order, and all I can say is that I hope you enjoy the journey! As always, I'd love to read your thoughts, comments, reactions, just about anything!
> 
> My Tumblr DM's/askbox are also open, albeit I'm on a break from actively reblogging/liking things on there. [https://clumsycopy.tumblr.com/]()


	2. A New Protocol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While some are punished for breaking the rules, others can bend them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter coming up a day earlier because I forgot how to count and thought 11 + 10 was 20 :)

Being the subject of Kylo Ren’s attention is similar to plunging your head under water, having the cold, cruel liquid take away your sight, your speech, your hearing and bleed into your lungs, stealing every precious breath of air. You strain to keep your composure, feeling as dignified as a pitiful insect that is about to be stepped on. The notion of passing time is lost to you, how many seconds have ticked by? Are people mistaking your panicked lack of an answer for a vulgar display of insubordination? 

In an useless attempt to fix the chain of bad decisions you insist in crafting, you reply to Kylo’s remark, confirming what he already knows. You decide any answer is preferable than no answer and Kylo Ren has waited more than enough.

“Yes, Commander. I’m the one who upgraded your ship’s operating system.” Thank the stars your helmet's modulator stabilizes your wavering voice, imprinting a sense of normalcy that you don't possess at the moment.

“Such a _special,_ dauntless creature. Why should rules and restrictions apply to you?” His left hand swipes the air in front of your face, appointing you as a centerpiece under the spotlight of his unforgiving attention. “Perhaps you thought I wouldn’t notice. I wonder how you have managed to attain such a prestigious position while having substandard critical thinking skills. Did you know the ship belonged to me?”

“No, sir. Knowing wouldn’t change anything, Commander Ren.” Your enunciation is slow, each word being a step into thin ice, a shot in the dark, a gamble where the next move might be your last. _Would I have changed my actions if I knew?_ The rational portion of your mind yearns to say ‘yes’, that for once you’d listen to the primal instincts of self-preservation and keep your head down. However you can’t lie--even to yourself--and deny that a thousand people could have warned you and you still would have done it.

A large palm glides across his side, fingers toying with the length of his lightsaber, digits clasping around its girth before unclipping the weapon and aiming it towards you. Kylo twists his wrist, leather gloves straining in the process. If his saber ignites where it stands it will pierce your face, no doubt earning you a quick and meaningless death. 

His hand tightens around the hilt, choking the black, intercut cylinder. His weapon matches him, you think, carved out of wire and steel and artistry; you're puzzled at how it remains together when it looks like an ensemble of broken pieces. 

With the flick of his thumb, it comes to life. The blade springs forward, missing your neck by an inch, impaling your workstation instead. All you see is a red glare, so, so bright it hurts your eyes, but it reflects like blood gems on the chrome engravings of Kylo’s mask.  
  
The caustic noise of his weapon reaches you then, drowning any background noise. The crossguards brush the fabric around your neck, sparks singing patches of your uniform. While your garment is flame resistant, the heat of a lightsaber is no ordinary fire. 

“Do protocols have no meaning to you?” he hisses. 

His question rolls in your mind as you consider your next answer. A meticulous level of diplomacy is needed to navigate each verbal ambush that he splays out in your way. You are no negotiator, the art of crafting purposeful sentences, meandering through meanings and entendres and subtext with the accuracy of a sniper is inconceivable to someone like you. "They do, sir. But no set of rules can model all scenarios that we might be subjected to. Sometimes protocols are outdated and should be remedied. Sometimes they’re plain wrong."

"It's not your place to make the call," he retorts, stalking closer. He leans down, dipping his head to your eye-level. The loose strands of fabric that stick out of his cowl brush against the cool, reflective surface of your helmet. “If your place in the First Order is not clear, I will devise a reminder.”

Your breath quickens when he drives the lightsaber forward, twisting just in time to miss your skin. "I know what my place is, sir. I chose to make a rash, but not careless, decision to achieve what I thought was the optimal outcome for the First Order, based on the best of my ability. I’m proud of it and I have learned from it."

"Then you ought to keep learning." He steps back, snuffing out his weapon, but the bright red column still shines for another nanosecond. You take in a breath as he puts more distance between you, inhaling cold air that whistles through the tubing of your headpiece.

“Maybe I could teach you, sir.” The words stun you as soon as they leave your mouth. Out of the corner of your eye you see the nearest officers stepping away to hide behind another row of workstations.

He regards you for a long moment. “Take off your helmet.”

His retort extinguishes any answer you might come up with. Lying to his face, in front of your new--and perhaps former--coworkers is dangerous. So is admitting you have no regrets; you remain silent as a grave, exploiting the plausible deniability of keeping your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself.

“Not so talkative, I see. Curious how you’re insistent in keeping your thoughts to yourself when you had no qualms in interfering in your superior’s affairs.” Kylo's voice is flat, contained, you dare to deem it calm, even, yet it unnerves you all the same. He shuffles back, rising to his full height, leering at you from the impassive facade of his mask. "I said. _Take_ off your helmet."

You bring two quaking hands up to the latch on the back, pulling on the tabs and releasing some of the pressurized air sealed inside. The helmet whirrs open, expanding wide enough for you to raise it away from your head. It’s unnerving, disconcerting to stare at the blank eyes of Ren’s mask while baring your face to him.

The cowl slides down his helmet, revealing the smooth, opaque surface that wraps around his skull; you're mesmerized by the material, fighting the irrational voice in your head that urges you to toss your gloves aside and run your hands over it. Instead you tighten your grip on the workstation behind you, willing your trembling fingers to stay put. The pain of squeezing the edge of the workstation harder than needed is a welcome relief from the strange, intrusive thoughts.

Kylo nudges his lightsaber under your chin, lifting your head and scanning your face in search of something. 

He turns to the side and calls out, “Sergeant Teris.” Kylo yanks the weapon away, cape flitting behind him. “You. Follow me. I’m most eager to speak to General Hux about the quality of the workers under his regime.”

She approaches, attentive enough to maintain a wide berth. “Commander Ren, I apologize-”

“Spare your words, Sergeant. You do not need to speak in the same of your subordinates.” Kylo pushes past her, cutting through the crowd like an arrow.

He leads the way.

Silence punctuates the procession to General Hux’s office. At each new hallway, each unexplored sector you’re herded to, indignation poisons your tongue, threatening to pour out if someone dares to speak to you. The cold, frigid air that’s fueled into Starkiller Base claws at your skin, peeling away the layers of your face, leaving glistening muscle exposed, nerve endings fraying in agony.  
  
The blistering shame of being forced to remove your helmet and bare your features to the world is almost physical. A clipped exhale is all you indulge yourself in expressing, straining to contain your anger and avoid a potential outburst that could ruin you further. 

_Or I might speak whatever I want. If I’m done anyway, it doesn't make a difference. Why not go down burning?_

Consternation settles in your mind as you compare the immense effort to get this job with the time it took to throw it all away. It’s unfair, this situation you find yourself in, marching to a hollow meeting to pretend you have a chance to fight for your budding career, when you know your future is tethered to Kylo Ren’s hands and you’re nothing but a puppet ready to _dance_ at his whim.  
  
The helmet weights down your arm, it’s not an equipment made to be carried by hand; you have half a mind to smash it on the nearest panel. Or maybe the back of the Commander’s head. _How wonderful it would be_ , you ponder, hallucinating an image of yourself wrecking the object into oblivion.  
  
An unobservable hand cages yours, molding your digits to its will, pressing your palms on the hard surface of the helmet. Your muscles are futile in the quest to writhe your fingers free. Paralysis creeps up your forearm and soon the path between your hand and shoulder is burning with static, punctured by needles that lock your muscles into place.  
  
The physical discomfort slows your pace, soon you’re slugging at the tail of the group. Minutes trickle by like hours, how much longer can it take to reach the General’s office?

No guard dares to stop or question Kylo, no door remains closed in his presence. He guides you through another entrance, into an ample room with sparse decorations; a viewport, a desk and man focused on paperwork. No chairs in sight. You’re surprised at the rather simplistic setup of his working area.

“I’ve been expecting you, Sergeant. Officer,” he nods in greeting. “Commander. What brings you here?" Hux asks in a pointed tone, flickering his eyes to Kylo. 

"I have a _grievance_ with this officer. She can explain to you," he replies, hovering as close as your shadow.

Hux speaks out your name and surname in a question.

"Yes, that's my full name, General."  
  
He types on his datapad, pulling your files and reading your rank, eyes turning to Teris. “I remember when we discussed her, Sergeant. You had high expectations of this rising officer.”

Teris nods. “Indeed, General. Goes to show that sometimes the brightest stars are the first to crash and burn.”

_How touching._ An annoyed huff escapes out of your nose. You’ve been out of the elementary academy for years and yet you feel like a foolish child being scolded by the principal.

Hux gestures to you. “Start talking, officer.”

Your eyes dart to the General. “I took care of a safety risk against my peer’s counsels.”

"Embellishing your transgressions will not benefit you. Try again." Kylo’s voice rings at the shell of your ear, pulling a shuddering breath from you.

It's hard, almost impossible, but you keep your eyes trained in front of you. "I disturbed Commander Ren’s flight this morning by pushing an unauthorized update to the _outdated_ build of the operating system of his ship." 

“On your first day?” Hux’s eyebrows raise in astonishment. 

“Yes, General.”

“You’re a transplant, yes?” He makes no attempt to use a similar word, or to meander around its meaning, he’s economical and straightforward. Why would he waste time interjecting nicesess or tact in his speech?

“That’s correct.”

Teris’ eyebrows raise, her eyes snapping to look up and down at you; now retroactively searching for any clues she might have missed, anything to fit you in the mold. “That information was not present in her files, General.”

“We have found it’s best kept as classified to provide transplants a fair chance into assimilating to the First Order.”

Her jaw clenches, “Which system do you come from?”

“Solar.” Before she can hurl another question your way, you add: “I’m from Earth.”

“How convenient. A colony that has a new uprising almost every cycle.” She scrunches up her face.

“I spent most of my life under the First Order. I pursued all levels of education and reconditioning provided here. I’m a model-” you bite to stop yourself from using the wrong word, reverting to incorrect speech patterns, “I’m a model _individual_.”

“Indeed you are.” General Hux agrees. “Alas, your record is tarnished now. Had you kept your pursuits a while longer you’d have earned your full residency status.”

“I’m aware, General Hux. What can I do to remedy this?”

“There’s nothing to be done. Were you a full resident, your actions would be taken as an act of insubordination. You would serve time in reconditioning and then be reintroduced into your duties while supervised by a trusted peer. But in your case, different protocols should be applied.”

_No. He can’t send me back._

“How different are these protocols?” you ask, knowing you won’t like the answer.

"Execution. Due to the nature of your status, you have committed high treason against the First Order."

"How? I anticipated a possible, and to be honest, imminent threat and prevented it." How can your actions be distorted to this extent?

Hux shuts off his datapad. "Yet you bypassed our security due process, officer. Even if your intentions were noble, they’re subjective, something I, or anybody else for that matter, can't verify. While the SOS department offers autonomy to our personnel, we still have to abide by rules."

"Even if they are wrong? Sergeant Teris, I'm certain you know better than I do that I did the right thing." A drop of sweat glides down your face as you wait for her reply. Your heart thrums in your chest, you fear it will explode at any moment.

"You violated our rules of access in a non-emergency scenario. I don’t condone your actions." She crosses her arms over her chest. 

Hux nods, pleased with her words. "Officer. The First Order doesn't run on 'right things'. We run on laws, on protocols that can't be infringed. Much like our code, if you will. There's no gain in extending this debacle. The bureaucratic procedure should take a week. You'll be put on administrative leave and we'll provide an attorney to assist you in sorting whatever affairs you have. Sergeant, I’m confident you’re eager to return to your duties. Your time will be better employed back in your department."

“Thank you, General.” She bows her head and strolls to the door, not sparing a second glance in your direction.

You step forward, raising your voice louder than you had intended to. "That's it? Half my life of‐"

"Not up for debate. After your application is submitted, the Supreme Leader will decide which method of execution will be applied."

"Do I not have the right of a hearing? A trial?" You hate how pleading your tone is.

The corners of his mouth quirk upwards. "No. It's an execution, plain and simple."

_Not to you._

"I don’t know what else to say, then,” your voice breaks.

“Then say nothing, _officer_.” Kylo looms behind you, the tips of his boots nudging you forward. “General Hux, I disagree.”

“Commander Ren, the protocol is clear. An act of treason demands an execution presided by the Supreme Leader.”

Kylo unclips his lightsaber again, pumping your veins with fear. “That’s a waste of time and resources. I can provide an execution right now, if that’s what you’re worried about, General. Your office will remain _spotless_.”

The electronic hiss of the artificial voice tickles your skin.

Hux takes another sip of his stimcaf, directing his ice-blue eyes to you. "No. That is not the point. We will proceed with the arrangements for the execution, I will oversee the bureaucratic intricacies and your testimony will be required for administrative purposes. Other than that, Commander, your input won’t be necessary." The General is not an impressive man, with discolored skin, dark circles under his eyes, a man who has less charm than a droid. The red, slicked back hair is his single source of warmth; even when he smiles it’s emotionless, void of any mirth.

Kylo hums, balling his hand in a fist. “The Supreme Leader will rejoice wasting his time with an audience to schedule an execution of a single officer. I fail to understand your reason in maintaining these pointless practices. Not to mention the idiotic vanity of it. No one’s death is worth a spectacle, there’s nothing extravagant about killing, nothing that should warrant planning or a second thought.”

“You’re welcome to bring your _concerns_ to the Supreme Leader, Commander Ren. Unless I’m ordered on the contrary, we _will_ act with respect to our protocols. They uphold order and unity in our organization and I intend to defer to them.” Hux shuffles through a stack of papers, plucking a smaller set of sheets and turning them over towards you. “Do sign here," he adds, offering you a pen.

The tip is about to touch the paper when the contents of Hux's desk are hurled in all directions, stimcaf bottle toppling over and spilling warm liquid on the clean floors.

"Seems fitting that a _new_ protocol is created to accommodate someone with such haste to disregard rules. I’m the wronged party in this instance and due to my rank, if we are to explore such technicalities, I have leverage of what is to become of this _distinguished_ officer." Kylo slams his hand on the disarrayed desk, almost crushing yours in the process. 

Hux narrows his eyes, sprouting a thin wrinkle of annoyance between his eyebrows. Displeasure sours his face, the corners of his mouth droop, nostrils flaring as he purses his lips, ignoring the twitching vein in his forehead, the budding ache that throbs in his temple. He rubs at his skull with two thin, pale fingers. A thousand replies die on his tongue, each permutation of words unprofessional, inappropriate and impregnated with his personal biases about Kylo Ren. Something he won’t ever share to anyone other than the Supreme Leader or the Commander himself. 

"Out. You're dismissed," Hux hisses at you, snapping his fingers towards the door.

Swallowing back an imprudent retort, you address your superiors and leave. As much as each minute inside that sterile room has dragged on for eternity, not being there proves to be an even crueler punishment. Hurried steps carry you out of the doorway, turning right, where you slump against the wall. Whatever rush of adrenaline that had sustained you this far ebbs away, causing you to crumble in a pitiful heap on the ground, cradling your face between your hands. You slam your head on the panel behind you, welcoming the painful ring of the hard surface on your skull.  
  
_If he had never said anything, I know no one would care. He knows he's wrong and he’s punishing me for it. Why?_

Against your better judgement, you sneak to the end of the hallway and wait.

You peer from the corner, pressing yourself on the blinking panels behind you when another officer walks into your direction, hoping you don't transpire the panic you feel at hiding out here. Will anyone notice your lack of high-clearance cylinders? The state of disarray of your uniform? That you don't belong? You obsess over it, almost missing the moment Kylo leaves the room, heading straight to your position.

He places himself closer than he needs to. “I’m impressed with your ability to worsen your life. All in one day. Enlighten me, why are you not in your quarters?”

“While General Hux dismissed me, I wasn’t told to return my quarters, sir.” 

“A gonk droid could have understood the subtext. Perhaps you should present yourself to the medbay so they can investigate your outstanding thought process,” he snarls.

“There’s something I don’t understand... I wanted to ask you, Commander.” _Something tells me you’re the one who would not care enough about confidentiality._

“You wanted to _ask_ me.” He drawls each word, mockery lacing his intonation. An amused huff escapes his modulator, ringing as an abridged cloud of static. Silence follows his phrase, his looming form standing out as a dark tower in the sterile hallway. From this point blank distance--without the black, dampening veil provided by your helmet--you consume the details of his figure. 

A cape drapes over his shoulder, flowing as a waterfall down volcanic stones; the horizontal flaps of fabric that detail his sleeves accentuate the gargantuan girth of his arms. Wrapping around the firm muscles, each row is an alluring invitation for you to skim your hands over his body, feel the texture of each garment he wears. How is it possible that every layer is deposited without flaw over one another, concealing the surface of his skin? You discern no seam, no gap, no lacuna that reveals a clue of what he looks underneath it all.

You take his silence for permission.

“Commander Ren, if I was wrong, kriff, I'd have come here myself, reported my mistakes to General Hux and accepted any kind of punishment because I'd know I deserved it. But I wasn't wrong. I’m certain that you know it too. Would you, please, tell me why you decided to- to _punish_ me? Or why am I going to be executed? Was it my insubordination? Refusal to apologize? What was the reason?.” Your chest heaves to accommodate your irregular breathing, this maelstrom of anger that swirls inside you. The long, sterile, hallway might be the last thing you ever see; you’re taunting the harbinger of Death right to his face, daring to demand answers you have no right inquiring.

Emotion is an undetectable substance in the manner he speaks. “You're reassigned to work under me.”

The evasive, minimalistic reply pierces through the chaotic disorganization of your thoughts, injecting a dose of shell-shocked clarity. The helmet in your hand clatters to the floor, suffering an impact that dents its sleek surface and distorts the reflections into jagged shapes that stem from the cracked area.

“I- I wasn't aware you had a designated SOS engineering team," you admit, voice wavering in surprise.

“I don't. You're the first. Congratulations.” Kylo tilts his head, mask trained on your face as he studies the array of emotions that wash over your bare features. "Where's the gratitude for your promotion?"

_Promotion?_ “Thank you for this opportunity, Commander.What about the... execution?” The question is pulled from your throat, solid as fog. Saying the word makes it real, and wave after wave of nausea threatens to take you down. Invisible fingers ghost over your throat, sending a chill that creeps up your spine.

“Postponed on the grounds of my assessment of your _behaviour_. There’s no need to concern yourself with it. Either way it won’t be in your future. Tomorrow I will introduce you to your new assignment. I make the bold assumption that you have enough intelligence to follow a set of simple rules.” He walks past you, in long, rigid steps, cutting off the conversation. In contrast, you remain paralyzed, turning his words in your mind, wishing for your brain to resume a minimal level of cognitive activity so you can process what he had said.

_‘Either way it won’t be in your future’. I won’t be executed… this doesn’t mean I won’t die. No. Of course._

A headache blooms in the depths of your head, pain throbbing in pulses. Not content enough to cast away the security protocols, force you to risk your job--and unbeknownst to you--your life to mend his messes, Kylo now admits to your face that he bent the rules to get to you. The unfairness of it all tastes bitter on your tongue. Yet, even if you don’t want to, even if you curse yourself for doing it, you can’t stop looking at him.

His silhouette tapers down with each stride that takes him down the hallway, shredded cape fluttering over the breadth of his back, a mock imitation of wings. You're enraptured in observing him, this man, this creature that descended from space dust straight into your life. His presence is a void that distorts the fabric of reality as he walks, the world bending to accommodate him; officers attempt to move out of his way with discretion, stormtroopers doing so with less subtlety. The red tube lights that crown each intersection seem to flare brighter whenever he passes under them, his power permeating all around him. 

It's a hypnotizing sight, a spectacle to watch; the elegant way that he moves, like he's a meteor fading away. When he turns a sharp corner, disappearing out of your sight, you’re free. The vacuum of his parting releases you from your reverie--you blink away the remnant images of Kylo Ren that persist behind your closed eyelids.

You need to be alone. To be somewhere you’re able to yell and cry without drawing attention to yourself. Somewhere you don't need to maintain composure, your image, your reputation. You know where you need to go, but after the unpredictable turn of events, you fear getting there without issue will be no ordinary feat.  
  
Careful to go on the opposite path that Kylo chose, you tumble out of the high-ranking officer’s sector, hoping you can reach the main corridor of Starkiller without getting lost.

Another deserted walkway greets you. It’s no surprise, most employed officers are occupied with their jobs, the ones who are not working are resting or preparing for their upcoming shifts. A rush of cold air and snow pulls a shudder from your body. To your left, the frigid, all-white landscape of Illum forces you to avert your eyes to the ground. To your right, TIE fighters fly over the bridge you’re standing on; their shrill, ear-splitting sound startles you, leading you to halt to a sudden stop. 

Something heavy collides with your calves from behind, shoving you on your knees. Your hand lets go of your broken helmet, it rackets on the floor, sliding sideways until it topples over the slotted rails, falling on the levels below. It’s almost a miracle how you still manage to brace yourself to prevent your face from hitting the ground.

_What the hell…_  
  
A BB-9E unit lets out a string of indignant beeps, hurling past you without a single backwards glance. It takes a few moments for you to make sense of the incident, to collect yourself and rise to your feet. You stroll over to the railing, trying to peer at the area under the bridge. A pair of stormtroopers help a third one to stand up, the white armor of their torso shattered by a black mass that must be whatever is left of your helmet. With a gasp, you pull away before they have a chance to spot you.

The next leg of your journey takes a longer time than usual.

You’re cautious not to touch anything unless you need to, this day has been surprising you whenever you think it can’t get any worse. The notion of making it home in one piece seems harder than you could have ever anticipated. One stop awaits you, the single reason why you took a detour in the first place. You walk on auto-pilot as you try to understand how a day can begin with a prestigious start in your dream job and end with you being run over by a droid. Not just run over, but reprimanded as well. How much lower can you go?  
  
At last you arrive at this isolated corner of Starkiller, home to maintenance sanitation rooms that have been repurposed to store objects no one knows what to do with.

With your mind distracted by your anxious predictions of tomorrow, you don’t pay attention to your surroundings, walking inside the secluded storage room without noticing someone’s there. Light seeps in from behind, casting a huge shadow on the opposite wall; illuminating a cloud of sparkling dust and a man.

The heap of broken droids, crates, destroyed panels and loose wires towers over him. Half of the pill lamps are missing, imbuing a jigsaw puzzle of light and shadow to the room.

He has his back to you, and jumps after the door slides shut behind you, startled by you as you are by him. The man scrambles to put on his helmet; trembling hands struggling to adjust the white piece over his head. His uniform is tilted, misadjusted, chipped in some places even. The black fabric that stands between the armor and his body is not tight enough, bunching up in some places, showing a patch of brown skin just below the stormtrooper’s headpiece.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” You step back, groping the wall, looking for the button that will re-open the door.

He turns to you, snapping his hands to his side. “I was about to leave, the room is yours, officer.”

“No, don’t. You were here first. Besides, you look like you need it more than I do,” you shrug.

He’s silent, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Before he can reply, you push the right button; the door splits open and light floods into the room. You take the chance to slip out, turning back in the same direction you had come from.

_Enough exploring for today._  
  
Despite being disappointed you’re not able to get your cherished 15 minutes peace and quiet, you feel sad for the man. Whatever had caused him to seek refuge from his colleagues must have been atrocious. In a twisted way, you’re comforted by the fact someone is having a terrible day too. You return to the housing sector, finding no familiar faces along the way, which is a stroke of luck, since the corridors are swarming with people entering and leaving their shifts. Each broken word that you hear in passing hammers on your mind; are they talking about you? Does the whole base know what a disgrace you are?

On the final portion of the residency hall, you squeeze past a group of officers. They’re huddled together, gossiping; you pick up fragments that mention a stormtrooper who got sent to the medbay in the middle of their shift. The corners of your mouth twist downward, lip quivering in guilt. _I’ll find a way to fix this_ , you promise yourself, making your way to your apartment, the one at the other end of the hallway.

You tiptoe into your shared quarters, typing the keycode one slow button at a time. If luck is on your side, you should be the first one home. 

A cacophony of noises echoes from the kitchen. "That took you long enough. I’ve been waiting for ages! What the hell happened? Commander Ren hadn't set foot in the SOS quarters in ages and you made him show up on your first day?" Myria slams a pan on the stove, spilling some liquid around it.

"I guess I did.” You loosen the straps of your uniform, opening the jacket to reveal the black undershirt beneath it.

“I missed it. Of all days, today was the one where I worked the second shift. When I checked in, _everyone_ wanted to know about my famous roommate. In fact, they still do.” She whirls around to face you, a plasma knife on her hand. "Where is your helmet?"

“I lost it, but I guess I won't be needing it for a while. There’s nothing interesting to know about me.” The thought of the whole department trying to get to know you, prying on your life fills you with unease. You join her in the kitchen, cleaning your hands and flipping the vegetables on the sizzling pan atop the stove.

“Well, that’s the price of fame. You’re going to be the hottest topic in the cafeteria for a long time. I never saw Teris so enraged. If she also had a lightsaber I think some of us wouldn't have made it through the afternoon. Wait, what do you mean you won't be needing it?" She pauses, knife slack in her hand, blade burning the counter top. "Fuck!"

You grab a towel from a hanger and pat at the burn site, stopping the ashes from spreading through the sleek surface. "I'm sorry for pissing off the Sergeant. I- never meant for it to happen. So much for causing a good impression on my first day. No worst-case scenario that I pictured could ever live up to this."

"But looking at the bright side, you're a legend now," she beams, turning off the stove and fixing a plate for herself.

"Oh, right, I'm a role model of what not to do. Enough about my disaster of a day, what happened during the second shift? I hope Alen didn’t get in any trouble because of me, he seemed nice." You pour your dish, moving to join Myria on the couch.

She turns to you, a dangerous smile on her lips. "He is. He's even better without the helmet."

You narrow your eyes. "No. Don't even start. He's my mentor, that would not fly in our department. Or any department."

"To be honest, after today I have the impression you won't be coming back for a while. Are they shipping you off to re-education? What will happen to you?" She relaxes on the seat, propping up an elbow on the corner of the couch.

"I know as much as you do," you tell the half-lie, half-truth.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough. If today wasn't a workday, we would go out to celebrate," she says between mouthfuls of food.

"There's nothing to celebrate, what the fuck are you talking about?"

She glares, shaking her head. "Do you think you were the first to point out that glaring security flaw? Of course not. You were the first one who was dumb, uh… I mean, _daring_ enough to do something about it. The whole department is relieved that won't blow up in our faces anymore."we don’t have to worry about that blowing up on us anymore. I swear you wouldn’t even need to pay for a drink. Also, Alen would without doubt help you to forget it all.”

“Come on, we spoke two sentences to each other, he doesn’t even know what I look like.While I think it’s wholesome that you want to treat me to a night out… I’m going to stay under the radar for some time. The thought of running into Hux, or Teris or _him_ … I’d rather stay holed up here as much as I can.” _Kriff, this dinner was delicious._

She scoffs. "I don’t blame you. A meeting with Hux, Teris and," she lowers her tone of voice, "Commander Ren is the stuff of nightmares. I applaud you for getting out in one piece."

"To be honest I didn't talk that much. It's not like they would have listened to me anyway and I figured I had drawn enough attention and scrutiny for one day."

"Did they fire you?" She scrapes the remaining noodles off her bowl before rising to her feet and throwing it in the durelium washer.

"Yes, something like that." You finish the last mouthfuls of the broth, putting the dish and pans away.

The evening goes on with less chater, both of you captured by the newest episode of a holo novel. Your care-free laugh shifts into a grimace in your throat. Even the unbelievable, over-the-top scenarios of the show pale compared to the mess that your life has turned into. There’s no point in watching it anymore, you excuse yourself and head into your room.

You don’t bother to turn on the lights when you enter the refresher. Each piece of clothing is peeled and thrown on the ground. You set the shower to its maximum intensity, delighting when the water hits your back, smoothing out the aching, tense knots. When your skin begins to burn in protest of the almost boiling water you step away from the stream to start washing yourself. No matter what you do, your brain insists in replaying the events of the day. Kylo’s voice. Kylo’s lightsaber. Kylo’s presence. Tomorrow. You will see him tomorrow.  
  
It’s impossible to remain under the shower forever, you shut off the water, pawing at the wall in search of your towel. You dry off your hair and wrap the thick fabric around your body. The soft texture of your sleepwear is like a hug; restoring some dignity for the first time in the entire day. 

That doesn’t last for long. An incessant buzzing rings, pulling you back into the bleak reality.

A message takes over the screen on your datapad, flickering hologram casting a red, soft light on your wrist. The hairs on the back of your neck stand as you read the words.  
  
_Your new duties begin tomorrow._  
_The clearance tokens have been added to your records. A droid will deliver your uniform and the security cylinder that will grant you access to your work area. 0800._ _  
_ _Be on time._

_K.R_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's already chapter 2 and they're not fucking yet, but it will come. Tell me your thoughts, predictions, anything, I have this plotted halfway through and there's still a lot to decide on.
> 
> My Tumblr DM's/askbox are also open, albeit I'm on a break from actively reblogging/liking things on there. [https://clumsycopy.tumblr.com/]()


	3. Operational

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A second chance at a first day of work. Will you do better this time?

You awake with no recollection of falling asleep at all. In an instant the string of anxious thought slays through your mind, shattering your brief instant of slumbering relief:  _ I work for Kylo Ren. I work for Kylo Ren. I work for Kylo Ren.  _ The covers pool at your feet as you stand, rolling your shoulders to ease some of the tension that crept back in your muscles. Groaning at the unfavorable prospects of your day, you march to the refresher. 

No other messages had arrived during the night.

The cold water does an impeccable job of waking you up, soaking your hair and running down your face until it’s all one constant stream cascading across your body. Drops form at your eyelashes and you blink them away, watching as they fall like tears. 

Shrouded by the cowl of the cyan lighting before the artificial sunrise, you step out of the apartment, picking up the small crate that waited for you there. 

It's a black all-steel cube marbled with red and silver. You press on the embedded first order insignia and the lid opens with a hydraulic hiss. The box is padded on the inside, with square stitching splitting the surface like pixels. 

Inside you find two equal new sets of uniforms. They're pure black, with red embroidery peeking through the hems of the garment. To your confusion, you feel a small pang of pride. No one has a set of clothes like this, you assume. Had he picked them out for you? Had he touched the fabric? With his bare hands? You trail your knuckles over the clothing, picturing you're trailing the same path that he once did. The conclusion of the thought causes you to tear your hand away from the crate, tightening your fingers into a fist by your lap.

_ Why am I doing this? What the hell is wrong with me... _

The clothes are discarded aside, while you run your palm inside the crate in search of the security cylinders. You pluck them out of the emboss they're fit inside, holding them up to the light. Similar to the clothing, they follow the same red-black color scheme. Its material reminds you of the one on Kylo's helmet; opaque and smooth.

Your heart picks up, conflicted. On the positive side, you're not  _ dead _ , but your life is not yours anymore and you're unsure which option is worse. 

A day ago you had strutted out of these doors, filled with optimistic overconfidence that you could take out anything in front of you. One mere sunrise later has you hovering through Starkiller Base like a ghost, haunted by your dubious future. The red trail on your datapad guides you through the mesh of equal corridors, up and down elevators, across bridges and stairways. At last, you come up to a wall. To the left, there is a set of durasteel blast doors alternating on each side and to the right, a single larger door sits at the end of the hallway.

  
  


You figure Kylo Ren would have a secluded area all to himself, so you turn right. Each of your steps slows down as you get closer to his quarters. Dread sinks on you like a veil. A faint, irrational voice pleads for you to turn back and hide in your quarters. Another tells you to barge inside with no regrets. The panels that frame the door are bare except for a small pair of notches on the right side.

hesitating before plugging your cylinder to the designated notch on the blinking panels at the side. ‘0750’ flickers on your datapad. While you aren’t late, you’re not on time either. In your haste to give yourself enough chance to make it on time, you had miscalculated and have 10 minutes to spare.

The fear of doing something wrong again and so  _ soon _ is overpowering, seizing your muscles and frightening your body into paralysis for a few seconds. Before you can take two steps back, the door opens and Kylo steps out. He misses crashing into you by an inch.

Two gigantic men strut out of the door, splitting to your right and left to avoid colliding with you. Their faces are shielded behind crude, unrefined helmets. There’s a resemblance with the Commander’s mask, although they aren’t as resplendent as his. You freeze in place for a moment as the pounding terror inside of you vanishes, replaced by incapacitating fright. The men approach, needing nothing more than the threat of proximity to make you step back as if you are two equal sides of a magnet. 

While you are enthralled by Kylo's brutality, enraged by his manipulation, drawn by your repulsive attraction to him, these men have the opposite effect on you. Where the Commander is carved marble, lapidated gem, his soldiers are molten stone and crude ashes. They unsheathe their weapons; a blade so large it could cleave you in half with no effort required and a blaster with a massive gauge, capable of a shot that could disintegrate you in one try.

You're about to bolt across the hallway when the door whirrs open again and Kylo Ren steps out. At that moment the demeanor changes, the silent knights retreat to flank their master and you cower at the sight of triple death. 

Kylo's void features are trained on your quivering form. He walks forward and his men move in tandem with him. Your eyes roam over his figure, searching for any clues that might indicate his mood. The Commander's fists are clenched by his side, tight and still in contrast to the subtle rising and falling of his wide shoulders. The harsh tube lights glare on the chromed engravings of his helmet. As he trudges over, his long, tattered cape wavers behind him, revealing the lightsaber clipped to his hip. The remembrance of your last encounter with the blade tears a shiver out of you.

He stops. So do the other men. Silent. Looming. Inches away from you. Waiting.

"Commander Ren," you greet. Now that he’s closer, you attempt to focus on him and forget the terrifying men that hover at the edges of your vision.

"Go  _ inside _ ," Kylo hisses, the sound modulated into distorted crackles of static. The voice is more inhuman than anything else, convoluted and artificial, if you didn't know any better, you'd say a droid had spoken. 

You stagger for a second too long. He shares a silent look with his knights and the men split forward, pushing past you.

Kylo fists the collar of your uniform, dragging you alongside him as he re-enters his quarters. The surroundings are a blur to you as you struggle to keep up with him; each of his long strides is equivalent to at least two of yours. The neck-breaking speed of Kylo’s steps makes you fall twice. He spares no thought and keeps pummeling through his living area, it depends on you whether you’ll scurry to follow him, or let yourself be dragged across the floor.

When he stops, your body is launched forward by the ever going momentum. Kylo holds you before you crash to the floor, anchoring a hand under your elbow and yanking you into an upright position. He stares at the point of contact between your bodies and snaps his hand away to rest at his side.

He’s towering and imposing, clad in all black, sucking the light out of the room. White walls, framed by countless white and red pill lights fill the space with excessive brightness, like an artificial reproduction of the snow-covered environment outside.

"I told you to be on time. Yet here you are, 10 minutes before schedule. With an incomplete uniform. How can you have such disrespect for the most basic protocols?" He struts back and forth in front of you.

"I apologize, Commander. For the missing piece of my uniform, that’s inexcusable," you force the words out, interlacing your hands together over your lower back.

A cloud of undistinguished noise escapes his modulator as he exhales. "Spare me. I’d use your title, but you’re so incompetent that I can’t bring myself to call you an officer. Maybe wearing two-thirds of your uniform is a great accomplishment for you."

"Very well. Then why am I here if I’m so incompetent? I don't understand how being early is a bad thing. I'm eager to do whatever assignment you've chosen for me. I know I can do things no other engineer can. If you want to find a reason to nitpick everything I do, then I can't stop you, sir." Inching forward, you lift your chin to meet the black void that takes the place of his eyes.

"It's not about being early, it's about obedience. Your lack of." He dips his head to your level, placing the muzzle of his mask right on the shell of your ear. "I will correct you. Still, I have to concede that you’re right, for a change. You will do things no other officer has done before." Kylo twists your words, turning your confident phrase into an ominous threat.

The rhythm of your racing heart threatens to shatter your ribs. You swallow the acrid bump in your throat before replying. "I’m not afraid of you."

He halts in front of you, tilting his head. "Saying it won’t make it true. I figured you were above these delusions of grandeur. Are you so certain you won’t fear me?" His gloved hand trails up his body, shifting his cape away, revealing the threatening hilt of his lightsaber.

A faint scraping sound echoes as you take one step back. "Yes."

" _ Commander _ ." Kylo completes your sentence in a clipped, flat tone, letting the sound echo into nothingness. His fingers wrap around his lightsaber as if he intends to destroy it with his sheer strength. His leather gloves catch small patches of diffused light; he has the dark night sky with glittering stars draped over his hands. When he runs the crossguards of his weapon over your chest, it scrapes and tugs against the collar of your uniform. "I’m starting to think your issues are deeper than I thought. Forgetting your honorifics, officer? Many have died for less."

_ This is all theatrics. He needs me. He won’t kill me... now. _

"I’m not ‘many’,  _ Commander _ ." You shuffle back, twisting the edge of your collar under your fingertips, putting the material back into its place.

"Of course you’re not. I don’t think the other officers on this base have persistent thoughts that linger on my touch? My lightsaber? I know what you’re dying to see." His right hand covers your eyes, while his left glides down your body, settling at your hip. "Tell me what you want to know and I might show it to you if you  _ deserve  _ it."

"There’s nothing I want from you, Commander Ren," you pant, imbuing as much vitriol as possible into his title, even as your voice withers.

"Liar." He shoves you backward with a simple push of his hand. Your back collides with the corner of a column that sits in the middle of the room, knocking the wind out of you. He doesn’t give you a moment to adjust your position, closing in on you while you’re pushing yourself up.

He crouches, settling one knee between your spread legs. A hand wraps around the column of your throat, pressing until you hear the strange whisper of blood rushing in your ears. Comforting darkness clouds your vision as your eyes flutter shut in unwanted bliss. The leather of his glove adheres to your palms when you attempt to move his wrist, but you don't know if you're tugging him closer or pushing him away. Still, you don't dislodge him. The pressure on your neck saps your energy, shrouding your senses in a veil that diffuses your awareness.

The brink of unconsciousness laxes your inhibitions, pulling a confession out of you. "I want to know what you look like."

"Why?" He pauses for a microscopic moment, hand finding purchase on your lower back. Kylo slackens his hold on your neck, fingers dancing on your flesh as hue seeps back into your skin.

"Because I'm curious to see if you’re real after all," you admit. The disclosure embarrasses you, shames you into brooding silence. The vulnerability of revealing your curious desire aches more than the ring of bruises that bloom around your throat.

"I am." He nudges his knee forward, pressing it against your aching cunt. The hard shape of the bones hurt and hits on all the right and wrong places, but a gleam of pleasure stirs among the pain. 

You hold onto it, legs quivering around Kylo’s thigh as your hips shift, chasing the sensation again. The twisted, unnatural position strains your joints, but that’s inconsequential compared to the need, the scientific experiment in finding the right way to grind against him.

Kylo jabs his thigh forward, causing your body to sway like a ragdoll yet your head remains in place due to his unyielding grip on your neck. He cants his head forward, whispering as much as a vocoder will allow, "You’re pathetic."

"I-I’m not," you growl. An insistent pounding aches from deep within your head, as the thought of getting what you want, but having it come from  _ Kylo _ battles with the thought of infuriating him, at the denial of your own pleasure.

His hand coasts across your skin, his fingers digging into the pliant flesh of your hips so he can shift your body upward. Now you’re straddling the thick slab of his thigh instead. "It's pitiful how starved you are. Everytime I touch you I notice your breath hitching on your throat."

You shake your head, pinching your eyes shut, hoping that not seeing him will nullify the reluctant attraction.  _ This is wrong. He's wrong. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't- fuck. How did my life turn into this? _

Kylo snarls, driving the maw of his helmet over your ear. His voice rings in an echo of pain throughout your skull, loud and distorted. "Your thoughts are incessant. Chaotic. Distracting. Don’t you ever focus on the present?"

"I'd be a lot more focused if you let me go, and do my job" you spit out.

Kylo lifts you off the floor by the scuff of your uniform, bringing your face inches away from his. "I didn't even touch you. I gave you no pleasure, yet all you can think about is finding release on my thigh."

"You're wrong," you murmur.

"I’ll give you something to focus on." His pointer and middle fingers dip inside your mouth, intruding on your throat. Each inch that he takes causes you to constrict faster, gagging around his digits. "This should mellow you out."

Your eyes sting with tears as your body struggles to resist the intrusion. A string of choked gags escapes around Kylo’s hand, urging him to increase the pace. He drags the pads of his fingers across your tongue, reaching as deep as possible. 

The hand on your throat uncurls, splaying flat against your clavicle, descending over your chest. He settles his palm where your throbbing heart pulses underneath the pads of his fingers. Kylo adjusts his right hand; hooking a thumb underneath your chin, rattling your head to choke you further. He motions his wrist back and forth, gliding across every ridge of your tongue, pushing past the back of your throat.

Your eyes scrunch shut as your body revolts against the intrusion. Still, the flavor of his leather glove is pure euphoria on your tongue; knowing that he’s almost touching you sends a wave of indignant desire through your spine. Another gurgle tears out of you, opening your throat wider and Kylo conquers the space, adding a third finger.

The addition seals your throat shut and any subsequent breath you manage to heave is dependent on Kylo’s mercy to pull out his wrist and allow you a few seconds of desperate reprieve. In a twisted way, he's right, all your thoughts are centered on the feel of his fingers inside your mouth.

His free hand grips your hip, thumb fiddling with the waistband of your trousers, dipping enough to feel the scorching heat of your flushed skin. The first contact makes your heart falter for a moment, your flesh tingling due to the soft touch of his hand.

“You want to touch yourself. Pathetic thing. You may hate me, but you hate yourself even more for letting my presence into your thoughts. I know what you want… and I’ll give it to you.” He remains still, noting the way you shiver at his words.

Kylo then yanks his wrist one final time, pulling a wet, choked gag from your throat. Your body folds forward, hands snapping to clutch his forearm for support. Drool leaks down your chin in thick ropes that sway without direction. Tears pool on your eyes and then drip down on the smooth tiles, glinting and shattering like crystals upon hitting the ground.

"You’re mental… what was that for?" Each word blisters its way out of you, a steep price to make sure your voice is still there. It is, albeit broken and shattered by the aching pain on your throat.

"Consider that your… orientation." With a wave of his hand, he extinguishes the touch between your bodies, forcing your hands to snap to your sides. In a slow gesture, he wipes his glove on your uniform and splays his palm on your lower stomach. The pads of his fingers indent your flesh, followed by a push that shoves your body away from his. Rising to his full height, Kylo steps back and adjusts his robes. "Stand. I will show you your assignment."

"Why me?" The question echoes in the silent room, dampening second after second along with your hope of a reply. You drag your knuckles across your mouth and chin, dabbing to clean yourself. The room blurs into a white streak as you stand, trusting your quivering legs to sustain you.

Kylo crosses his arms across his chest and even through the coarseness of the fabric the shape of his muscles is still defined as marble. "All you need to know is: you’re now a tool to do whatever I want.  _ Mine _ ." 

The finality of his words plummets your mind. "No. I- work for you, that doesn't mean you own me."

"I see no difference. You're no more free than my ship or my lightsaber." He tilts your chin up, dragging his thumb over your slackened mouth. "A tool. For the First Order. For  _ me _ ." Kylo releases your face and walks in the opposite direction, leaving you to trail after him.

He guides you to a viewport, a massive sprawl of transparisteel that frames the howling blizzard outside like a painting. The trapezoidal windows each show an aspect of Ilum: the dark stones that were carved out to give way to Starkiller Base, the soft plains of snow, and the parallel lines of firn that push against the foreign, human-made structures. You blink while you wait for your pupils to adjust to the sudden burst of light. 

A sleek, brand-new workstation interrupts the bleak emptiness of the chamber. It sits right at the center of the viewport, looking so insignificant against the wild environment. An eager spike of excitement rises against your will. You fight hard to suppress it, but instead, find yourself walking faster to keep up with Kylo as he approaches the station.

He glides his hand over the terminals, with a touch so light the sensors don’t even detect it. "You will work on a custom operating system for my TIE Silencer."

You pause, taken by both indignation and curiosity. "So you'll have me working on the very thing that made me get fired?"

"The only thing that made you get fired is yourself," he replies. Kylo curls the fingers of the hand that rests by his side, causing you to stumble forward.

_ I disagree. _ You do get the message, resuming your walk and stopping a few feet away from him.

"Sit." He gestures to the desk.

The chair’s pneumatic valves hiss as you sink on the seat, flicking the panels on. Instead of a cathode screen, a half-circular hologram lights up, sharp and blue and almost void of data or user-interface.

"This is bare. You’ve kept the kernel… wait, not even  _ all  _ of it... and not much else, Commander." You crane your neck to the side to meet his stare, a frown souring your face.  _ Of course, he’d make this harder than it needs to be.  _ "I need to install several modules to get this off the ground in a reasonable timeframe."

"No. If it’s not there, then it’s not for your use. Are you not skilled enough to build it into something operational?" Kylo drawls, positioning his mouthpiece right by your ear.

"That’s  _ not  _ my point. Commander." You pinch the bridge of your nose, suppressing a sigh. "I’m not saying I can’t do it, I’m saying it will be faster if I have something actionable to expand over." The chair glides closer to the workstation--and away from him--with a swing of your foot. Choosing to pretend Kylo left, you delve into exploring the operating system, analyzing whatever else you have at your disposal.

  
Maybe the next time you blink he won’t be there anymore.

"There's no  _ need _ to tell me your concerns. I expect outstanding work and I'll track your progress, officer." Kylo bows his head in a mock salute and stomps out towards the exit. Your chair catapults forward and the edge of the workstation knocks the wind out of you--no doubt an unnecessary and aggravating display of power on his part.

When the blast door slides shut behind the Commander, you release a faltering breath.

You stay put, body still aching with tension as each second twists another dagger into your heart. At any moment you expect him to come back. When he doesn't, you welcome the relief that washes over you like a soothing mist. As your breathing stills and your senses bloom with clarity, you shift your focus to the task in front of you.

There’s no better way be thrown into a zone where hours go by like seconds than diving deep into coding. As you begin reading the source code of the modules available, the circumstances in which you find yourself melt like snow in favour of occupying your mind with technical problems.   
  
You type the first command.

When you come to yourself, the snowscape behind the transparisteel is quiet and clear. A deep blue sky shows through, turning grey and then white as it blends with the horizon. You stand for a few moments, stretching your body to remedy any sore areas, before resuming your work.   
  
An indistinct sound echoes somewhere behind you but is soon ignored as you crack your head to figure out where this memory leak is coming from.  _ How can someone let this happen in production? _   
  
The noise repeats itself, louder and sequential, like steps.

_ Of course, write the memory deallocation right in the method that can get stuck in a deadlock, what could go wrong? _

You crane your head to the side to gaze at the call stack at the edge of the monitor, only to be met with Kylo Ren’s figure.

  
He hurls your chair around, forcing you to face him. The Commander slides into your personal space, moving forward until the back of your chair collides with the workstation. 

"You’re done for the day. If you’re  _ inattentive _ enough that you can miss my arrival, then you’re not fit to keep working on my ship."

You leap to your feet, stalking over to him with renewed anger. Each word is followed by a clipped step, by the end of your sentence, you’re snarling inches away from his mask. "Incredible. Every word you’ve just said is wrong. Fine, you can attack me, offend me, I’ll get over it. But you have no grounds to criticize my work.  _ Commander _ ."

He says nothing.

"Well, if my work is done, as you pointed out, please excuse me,  _ sir _ ." You circle him, maintaining his form in your line of sight for as long as you can. The sound of your tense footsteps pierces the seething silence. You avert your gaze to the front of you, still ever sensing his immovable form behind you. You’re one step away from the exit, about to press the button to open the door when your wrist is seized by an invisible pull, hovering inches away from the panel.

A displeased hum leaves his mouth. "I have not dismissed you."

Kylo extends his palm in towards you, arm lunging with sharp purpose, fingers spread, and pointing at you. A strange veil drapes across your body. It makes your skin burn and flare defying the forever cold temperature of Starkiller Base. One by one the rest of your limbs are frozen, cased in carbonite. Even your gaze is kept in place, trained to the Commander’s face as he approaches.

Your body is propelled in the opposite direction, pinned to the wall with ferocious strength. The sharp, geometrical bevels of the panel behind you dig into your skin. Lights dim and increase in an aperiodic tempo, flickering as if overpowered by the crying lightning of a storm. However, no storm can ever compare with the sight of Kylo’s barbaric, unyielding form.

He keeps his hand trained on you while he approaches, taking his sweet time to nurture your fear with this anticipation, deliberate pauses, and thundering footsteps. Once you’re in his reach, he molds his palm around your throat and you are defenseless to stop the shudder that courses through your body at his touch. He releases the hold that the Force has on your body, letting you dangle by your neck, crushed to the wall by his raw strength alone. Modulated, heavy breathing exhales through his mouthpiece; his body is a monument of pure, storming rage.

For a pained second, you wonder if he will crush your windpipe and leave your body to be picked up by a clean-up droid. You claw at his forearm, both hands necessary to wrap around the limb, and even so no matter how hard you push or hit, he remains in place.

"You overestimate your value, officer. You're here to serve whatever purpose I assign to you. You’ll arrive when I tell you to and leave when I dismiss you. Need I remember your life is tethered to my hands?"

_ No. _

"No? Why do I have the impression you still don’t understand your place?" He drawls, nestling his mask to rest over your face, aligning the void where his eyes are supposed to be with your own. He’s so close that you can’t focus and all you see is a blur of chrome and black.

_ My place is far away from you. _

"You may want to remember I can read your thoughts." His voice crackles with a tinge of amusement, a hint of a brewing intention to torment you once more. Kylo pulls away, but slides a hand to grasp at the nape of your neck, fingers intertwined on your hair.

A few seconds burn away before you recover your voice. "Maybe if you stopped scanning my mind you’d be less aggravated, Commander."

"Still so insolent. Have you not had enough torment for one day?"

Kylo rams down the hand that holds you with such ferocity that your futile attempt to remain standing is surpassed without a single pause. Your knees smash on the ground, sending painful tendrils down your shins. Once he has you where he wants, he shoves you backward, forcing you to sit with your legs folded underneath your thighs.

He kneels again, trapping your body between his, squeezing your back against the chair.

Kylo rakes his palm down your chest, kneading your left breast under his gloved, massive fingers. They dig into your skin and the heel of his hand flattens your flesh as much as your body allows.

Something stirs in your core. An ache, an unnatural flutter of your heart raises all kinds of alarm bells on your mind. Of course, you have been in danger since the moment you stepped into this room, since the moment you became more than a blip into Kylo Ren’s radar. But this is  _ different _ . This is real.

It’s so faint you don’t realize it at first, but your breath escapes your lungs in silent sighs, and soon you’re unable to breathe. No matter how hard you try, the air seems to stay trapped in place, not flowing in and out of your burning lungs. Your heart drums in your chest in a slow and unsteady rhythm. It’s as if an invisible weight is crushing your torso.

The rumors of officers lifted by their throats, unable to talk or breath, are believable. But you had never heard of someone being mangled on the inside.

You utter each word with less life in your voice. "How can you do this?" Maybe it’s your imagination, but your helpless grip on his forearm slackens by a fraction.

"Do what?" he taunts.

_ My heart- _

“Is stopping. Maybe you need to have it taken for you to appreciate my  _ mercy _ in allowing you to work for me.” He undoes the binding on his pants, tugging them down and allowing his cock to spring free.

Before you can look at it he covers half of your face with his free hand, stealing your sight and releasing the clutch on your heart. He sets a rough pace, pinning your head in place and sheathing himself on the back of your throat in a fluid movement. As you sputter around him, he rocks your skull back and forth.

Your eyelids flutter shut as your throat strains to accommodate him. It's impossible to miss the warmth that emanates from his towering figure. The proximity of his body pulls a series of shudders from your skin, even in pure darkness you find him alluring, noticing other aspects that were once eclipsed by your sight. A faint whirr reaches your ears, in perfect time with his breathing. The modulator on his helmet captures the smallest sounds, giving a robotic, digital aspect to something as delicate as a breath. Your own hitches on your throat when you listen to the rustle of fabric as he tugs at his clothing.

Kylo is still not satisfied with your positioning; he lifts you by fisting both sides of your collar, nudging his boots under your raised knees. The new position forces you to angle your head up unless you'd want to press your face against his solid thighs. 

He pulls you back by the fabric of your shirt, tightening your collar around your neck, cutting off your breath and circulation. Your mouth falls open in surprise, gasp soon extinguished by the invasion of Kylo's cock.

Something brushes against your heat, coaxing a renewed stream of wetness out of you. The black uniform is a solace, otherwise, you're sure a damp patch of fabric would be visible on your pants. The ethereal touch returns, alternating between feather-like and rough strokes. Your thighs quiver and you try to press them together in a way to suppress the mounting pressure that builds on your core.

Kylo slows down, opting for bottoming out and sliding into your mouth with less speed and more force. Each time he pulls a heaving gag from you, along with a new stream of tears that trail down your cheekbones. To your frustration, a desperate, languid sound leaves your mouth whenever he slides out.

He stills for a second, a dark, baritone, and mocking laugh escaping his mouthpiece. "Was that a moan?" Splaying his large hand over the back of your skull, he digs the pads of his fingers on your skin, drawing you flush against his hips. Kylo buries his throbbing cock all the way through until his balls are pressing against your chin. Your face nuzzles on the warm leather fabric of his pants; with each forceful breath, you inhale Kylo’s intoxicating smell.

You shake your head, gurgling an answer from the bottom of your throat, yelling ‘no’ inside your mind. But all that gets you is a pleasured hiss from him as your denial vibrates along his shaft and the accumulating spit on your mouth dribbles out, mixed with his precum. Despite having your eyes closed, another layer of darkness--unconsciousness--threatens to subdue you, siphoning energy away from your limbs. Kylo then removes you from his cock, angling your head backward to track his gaze over your face.

"Such a strange breed of hatred," he taunts, pinching your chin between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm rather satisfied with how well you were taking my cock. Maybe you’re not a failure at  _ everything _ ."

If his hand wasn’t gripping the back of your skull, or if he weren’t the most dangerous man in the galaxy, you’d have lunged at him already.

A modulated mockery of a laugh escapes his helmet while he grips your jaw harder, forcing you to open your mouth as a reflex.

He guides his cock inside again, sheathing until your nose bumps against him. The hand that once covered your eyes is lifted, but your stare remains pinned to the ground.

"Look at me," he demands. The commander waits for your tear-filled eyes to meet his, stopping for a few moments. His thumb swipes across your cheekbone as he takes him the whirlwind of emotions embedded in your gaze. "That’s it. Hate me  _ harder _ ."

Kylo takes a step back, mask tilted down to analyze you.

You crumble to the floor without the support provided by his lower half. Pressing your cheek against the tiles, you try to fill your lungs with air, chest heaving, and falling in a desperate rhythm. The pain still pulses with a life of its own, each beat of your battered heart pumping equal amounts of blood and agony. It worsens when you notice the sharp thread of desire weaved deep within your discomfort. Loathing dusts your tongue like ashes, yet when you swallow it down, choke on your words, as he had said, the ashes turn into embers and you burn at his disposal.

He nudges you wìth his boot and you recoil, pushing your trembling body up into a sitting position.

"Comfortable?" He offers you a hand; an unexpected and degrading gesture to help you stand.

"Why would you care?" you hiss, batting his wrist away.

His head tilts as he takes in your outburst. Kylo flicks two fingers of the hand he offered you, binding your wrists in front of you with the Force. You frown, attempting to move them apart, but they remain side by side. Breath after breath rushes through the modulator of his mask, sounding like an out of tune transmission. Your gaze switches between his shrouded face and the cock that edges closer and closer to you. His length is greater than any you’ve ever seen, thick and monstrous, rippled with veins, red and swollen and leaking at the tip. As he nears, you realize how large his cock is compared to your hands. He’s so close you’d be able to touch him if you could move.

Kylo works the length of his shaft, smacking his fist against his groin with each forceful stroke. You wish he'd toss the gloves aside so you could see the veins on the back of his hand, the thick and rough calluses on his palm, the tapered length of his digits. See his scars, his skin, everything. 

His cock twitches with the start of his climax. That moment is the first time you presence a crack in his stoic composure. 

His thumb caresses the side of your neck in the same tempo in which he pleasures himself. He's silent now, devoid of words while he savours the last instants of overstimulation before his orgasm overtakes him. Kylo releases a series of guttural moans, dropping the tone of his voice so low that it bypasses his vocoder for a split second. Before you can process it, the sound transforms back into strangled static.

The hold on your wrists tightens, bones aching in protest; perhaps a small lapse of control as Kylo chases his pleasure, perhaps a conscious act that increases his pleasure. Before it felt as if a thick rope coiled around your forearms, now there’s an invisible hand that grips your wrists; fingers digging and bruising your flesh.

You moan, trapped in a haze of pained pleasure as the pressure and speed of the Force on your clit increases. You're kept upright by its will, head pounding with your hopeless efforts to suppress your climax. The logical part pleas for you to hate it all, while the indulgent part whispers for you to enjoy it, why not let your climax run its course? Why not let go?

Kylo pulls you out from your mind's spiral when he exhales a strained breath through his modulator, guiding his leaking cock to hover mere inches away from your palms. Without any other warnings, he spurts thick strings of cum over the back of your hands and wrists. The fluid seeps into the indents between each finger, draping across your knuckles and the embroidery of your gloves alike.

He strokes his cock through the final seconds of his orgasm, squeezing from the bottom to the top to ensure no drop of his spend is wasted. Kylo drags the tip of his cock across the length of your hands, painting the remnants of his cum on the now glistening black leather. Your eyes track his every movement with robotic precision, gaze trailing from your wrists to where his throbbing length hovers inches above you. 

"Not what you expected?" he asks while tucking his cock back into his pants with one hand.

Your stare trails up his body, landing on the long sprawl of fabric that covers his body from head to toe, to the thick belt that curls around his muscular form.

Kylo seizes the moment when you open your mouth to fire back an acrid reply to then glide his thumb across the warmth of your tongue. You swallow the excess saliva that had accumulated while you watched him cum on you, sucking his digit further within your mouth. Kylo hisses in response to the slight pressure on his thumb. A subtle taste stings your tongue, piquant and warm--a small sample of his cum.

He pulls his finger out, wiping it off across your chin. You jerk your head away, jaw clenching as you look up at him with a storm brewing behind your eyes.

"You  _ lied _ , Commander," you murmur as you attempt to stand on unstable legs. The anger of being deceived and even worse--being näive enough to believe Kylo’s words--takes hold of your chest, suppressing any other words and the act of breathing. A dull ache spreads over your whole body, stronger on your neck and jaw. You’re battered. Unsatisfied. Left wanting. Angry.

Kylo touches his chin with his fingers as if he’s focusing on a thought. "You mistook my words for what you  _ wanted _ . It's not my fault that you were so  _ trusting _ ." He pats your cheek and his tainted gloves stick to your skin for a moment before he breaks contact.

_ Unbelievable. _ You bite back a retort that will no doubt earn you further torment. Even the most obtuse person would cower at the scorn that beams out of your eyes. You motion to wipe off the mess against your uniform, but your wrists are captured again by the Force, pinned to your sides with unnecessary strength.

"What do you think you're doing?" Kylo leans down to your eye level, casing your jaw between his large hand.

"Cleaning  _ your  _ mess." The words choke out one by one, suffocated by the pressure that his palm applies on your face.

He tightens his grip, shifting positions to grasp at your throat. The pads of his thumb and index finger shutting off your blood flow. "You'll do no such thing." Kylo straightens into his full height, releasing the column of your neck.

You take a moment to appreciate the rush and slight throb of the restored circulation. Of all events that happened so far, this order is the most unbelievable--and hardest to follow. "I'm supposed to walk half-way across the whole base with... with-"

He cuts you off, turning around and stalking over to the blast door. "With my cum on your hands? Yes, you are. Be grateful it's not on your face." The tattered cape flits behind him, following the clipped rhythm of his strides.

"Grateful is a word I'd never pick,  _ Commander _ ," you answer, trailing after his long footsteps. 

He stops and you swerve to the side, almost colliding with his hulking form. Kylo turns to your direction, pointing a finger at your face as he growls, "Such a shame to have so much raw, untamed potential muddled with your poor soft skills. You are to return to your quarters as soon as you walk out of this door. Don't stop anywhere else or attempt to clean your gloves during your way. I'll know if you do.  _ Now  _ you’re dismissed, officer."

With that, he spreads a hand between your shoulder blades, half-guiding, half-shoving you out of his quarters. The door whirrs shut behind you with a hiss. Even with several inches of durasteel between you and him, you know he's still staring at you, you swear you can feel his gaze puncturing through the material.

You jump when noise reaches your ears, originating from the other side of the corridor. From the area with six identical doors. The idea of facing any of the men you encountered earlier--or worse one you haven’t met--is terrorizing enough to urge you to action.

Each minute drags by an eternity while you trudge your way back to your quarters. This morning you felt no more visible than a ghost. Now you'd give anything to relive that sensation. Your mind had to be playing cruel tricks on you. Why do the hallways seem longer? Are you walking in circles? Is everyone looking at you? It's impossible, there's no way that anybody else could know what happened.

Yet it feels as if a thousand eyes are watching. Whenever you pass by another person, your brain murmurs,  _ they know _ . When you slither through another corridor you swear the eyes of a dour-faced officer flicker to a moment to your soiled gloves. Your fingers twitch, scraping against the fabric of your uniform. For a moment you yearn to storm into the nearest refresher and clean yourself, wash away the anger, shame, and myriad of irrational thoughts that simmer in your head.

But Kylo’s words stop you. The whisper that rushes through your mind is vivid as if you are hearing his voice right over your ears, " _ I'll know if you do _ ". You don't understand how he could read your thoughts being so far away from you. However, you're certain he's not lying  _ this time  _ and you're not eager to find out what he'd do if you disregarded that order. Still the insistent thought of him laughing to himself while you follow his orders under an unfulfillable threat just adds to your misery.

Of the countless scenarios you had conceived for how your first day working for him would end, ‘horny and unsatisfied’ wasn’t one of them. You can’t believe the number of times you almost skirted over the border between alive and dead, or how close you were to cumming, all thanks to  _ him _ . Feral, wordless ideas come and go, of impossible scenarios in which you’d steal a fighter and fly away.

You power through the last portion of your journey. To your relief, your company is all but a squad of marching stormtroopers. Their sameness blocks your turbulent thoughts, you can't see where their gazes are focused, can't see their faces and you doubt they have that much freedom to think, much less form an opinion about an officer. You let the formation of troopers pass by you, basking in the way their thundering footsteps drown your thoughts. 

The sight of the hallway of your residency sector has never been so welcoming. You bolt to the door, pressing on the keypad as light as possible, making sure you're not getting any of the keys dirty with Kylo's cum. Once the password's in and the gap between the two slabs of durasteel is wide enough, you shove yourself into your apartment.

Pitch darkness envelops you for a split second before the automatic lighting springs to life, bathing you into a soft, orange glow. No pillow is unturned on the couch, the kitchen sink and stove are spotless as you've left them this morning. Aside from your hurried footsteps, no other sound echoes in the empty apartment. As soon as you enter your room, you brace yourself against the door, sliding down until you're a heap of twisted limbs on the floor.

You place your palms over your lap, clenching and releasing your fingers, almost  _ admiring _ Kylo's work. A surge of anger skitters up your spine, indignant rage boiling and foaming at the bottom of your stomach and threatening to spill out of your throat. It propels your body into a standing position, tensing your muscles until you’re taking slow, staggering steps into your refresher.

The face in the mirror that stares back at you is foreign. A strange replica. Mock reproduction that looks like you, acts like you yet it's not the same person who left the previous morning. Blown out pupils hide almost all flicker of colors from your eyes. Nothing is visible behind your vacant gaze.

You lift your unstable hands, bringing them near your face. The pair of black leather gloves glistens with the remnants of Kylo Ren’s cum, with proof that he's human. A man. You turn your palms in every direction, catching all angles in the mirror. Even while looking at the evidence before you, you find yourself doubting the veracity of today's events.

Yet you find no trace of rage to care about any of it. Instead you can’t stop thinking about the baritone gasp you heard beneath the distortion of his modulator and how  _ raw  _ the unadulterated sound of his voice was.

You wonder how he would sound like crying out your  _ name _ over and over, hissing at the shell of your ear with his warm breath fanning over your skin. Would his voice crack just a little as he came apart over you? You wonder how his skin would feel like as he presses your body down on the sterile tiles, making you seek his heat as a reprieve from the cold.

Every cell on your brain fires at you to hate him, to find a way to make his life as miserable as possible with what little power you have, to make him hate you back and regret the day he ever met you. As vindicating as that would be, an even louder urge flashes images of the two of you fucking: on a bed, over your workstation, an empty hallway, before a viewport littered with stars.

No matter how hard you try to cast these thoughts away, they take effect into your body. An ache settles between your legs, making you press them in an attempt to stop the upcoming surge of wetness. You know your underwear bears the evidence of your hesitant arousal earlier.

That was Kylo’s doing which resulted in a natural response.

But this? Getting wetter and wetter due to these insane, nonsensical fantasies of fucking the Commander? That’s crossing a line.

An act you won’t be able to undo. 

_ I shouldn’t… _

Taking two steps away from the sink, you slam your back against the wall, staring into the white ceiling lights until your eyes hurt. When it becomes too much, you blink several times so the sting subsidizes. As your vision becomes stroboscopic, Kylo’s figure haunts you, hovering above you in the same way he stood while you had knelt before him.

Scrunching your eyes shut, you sink on the floor, letting your legs fall open to each side. One hand settles at the waistband of your pants, thumb swiping back and forth over the fly.

_ Just this time. _

You take the index and middle fingers of your free hand into your mouth, savouring the salty and bitter flavour. Now that you’ve started, all that's running through your mind over and over is licking each finger clean. With a newfound focus, you remove your fingers with a wet ‘pop’ out of your mouth before lapping on the back of your hand. Your tongue flattens against the soft, skin-like leather, chasing every drop that he gave you. 

The taste is milder than you expected. You are intoxicated by it none the same, closing your eyes so you can focus on that sole sensation. Broken vignettes surge behind your eyelids, flashing images of him exploding his cum all over your face, your open mouth, your chest.

Without hesitating you pry open the fly of your trousers, fisting the fabric tight in your grasp as you yank the material down your legs. You’re not efficient or coordinated, it takes a few seconds of shuffling side to side, bumping your knees into the furniture, but you throw the garment somewhere you’re not concerned about in the slightest. 

Now, you palm yourself over the thin fabric of your underwear, feeling the fabric adhere to your folds as you swipe your thumb back and forth over your clit. Your legs tremble for a second as a cold shiver wrecks its way down your body.

Your bare skin sticks to the tiles and the little hairs on your body rise as you grow accustomed to the low temperature. Soon you’re almost burning, as if your flesh could burn into flames at any second. You keep increasing the pace of the little flicks over your throbbing core, pretending that your gloved hand belongs to someone else.

Inching lower, you pull the sopping mess of your panties to the side, shivering when the detailed stitching of the leather touches your feverish skin. You hiss when you experiment dipping in one finger, sinking to the last knuckle.

Somehow, the disdain you feel for him fuels your arousal. It’s infuriating and exhilarating to make a mess of yourself on your bathroom floor thinking of someone that you would love to throw away in a garbage chute. You laugh at the thought, although the mirth is short-lived, when you start choking out of nowhere, wheezing for air as you curl your knees up to your chest.

After a few deep breaths, you trust yourself enough to rise to your feet, tiptoeing in slow, tentative steps to your bed. The stupefying sequence of events had taken their toll on you. It’s as if your body is about to go through power-cycling--about to shut down at any minute--only to wake up the next day in a brand new state.

When you allow your body to drop over your soft bedding, your eyes flutter shut, seeking the restoring nothingness of sleep. Still you don’t want to surrender and let exhaustion take you. Something on this wretched day needs to go the way  _ you _ want it to and you’ll be damned if you don’t finish what you started.

The guilt you’re about to feel tomorrow hovers like a scythe over your head, the least you can do is get an orgasm before your actions are spoiled by the clarity that arrives with the first wisps of morning light. You shift up on the mattress, resting your head against the pillow until your body is as comfortable as it can be for now.

In the next breath you’re fast asleep. A buzzing, irksome beeping threatens to bring you back to the awake world, but shoving your wrist under the pillow muffles the threatening sound.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took me long enough, better late than never, I suppose. I’m working on getting back on track so this doesn’t happen again. Hope you enjoy it!  
> This was the longest chapter I've ever written, and I feel strangely proud of it. I like how Kylo was portrayed here and I have to work really hard on not spoiling stuff that I have plotted for the next chapters... oops.
> 
> I read and cherish your comments, so keep them coming :)
> 
> My Tumblr DM's/askbox are also open, albeit I'm on a break from actively reblogging/liking things on there. [https://clumsycopy.tumblr.com/]()


	4. Spare You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're not the only one who wants to know the elusive reason of why Kylo Ren spared you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost according to schedule! I like the way this week is starting!

Sometimes you dream of memories. Of wispy, fogged reminiscence that has been polluted by time, no longer faithful to what it once was. 

It’s always the same, you’re trapped in a hallway. Infinite sections spread behind and in front of you, stretching on forever. The end neither gets closer nor farther away, no matter how much you run. It’s as if a new portion renders before your eyes with each step you take.

A thousand needles puncture your head when you attempt to remember how you got there,  _ why _ you’re there, but your mind comes up with a blank, marred by a fault in your memory that adds to your despair. Scanning the hollow space, you find no familiar mechanism that could prove to be a way out. Grazing your fingers across the walls, you find them to be engraved with foreign symbols. The same script is present on the keypads you come across, two words also stamped vertically on doorframes.

Every once in a while, the corridor will cross another, spawning a door on either side of you. Yet they don't provide an escape, revealing a worse and sobering reality when they spread open with a hiss. Instead of another section of the ship, it unveils an abyss dotted with stars. You'd be awed at the thought of being in outer space if your home planet wasn't shrinking before your eyes as the spaceship glides away. 

A scream dies in your throat when the haunted view morphs into a whirlwind of blue, stars splitting into never-ending lines. There's a pause, sufficient for you to hold your breath, a second of distraught silence. Then, the crack of a whip echoes and the ship catapults into the vortex, launching your body away towards the opposite wall. Your skull cracks against the hard surface, the impact blooming dazed sparks behind your eyelids. 

You curl into a ball, shimmying your trembling limbs tight against your body and praying that the gasthly feeling of suffering through a turbulence with nothing to hold onto goes away.

When you rise to your feet, the hallway has transformed into a kaleidoscopic abomination, shifting in place and blurring the lines between above and below. Palming the wall to your left for support, you shuffle forward. You find that keeping your eyes trained on the sleek floor alleviates the dizziness of walking through a shape-shifting environment. A string of slow, quiet breaths are pulled from you as you try to contain the shattering rhythm of your heart. 

Counting the number of steps you’re taking quells the raw panic that stirs inside you. Dread bites at your throat whenever the notion that you’re never going home again buzzes through your frayed mind. You fight to keep it at bay, swallowing the lump, the tears and pain that constrict your larynx, until they dissolve into caustic discomfort.

When you reach a hundred steps, you congregate enough bravery to lift your gaze. There, you peer through half-opened eyelids at the insignificant spark of hope that sits at the end of the tunnel. A small dot of light shines through an opening, promising an escape from this nightmare. Still, it presents no change in size or intensity even as you pick up your pace, drowning the thrumming of blood rushing through your ears with the pattering sound of your footsteps.

Your breath comes out in short, labored pants, giving way to the searing inside your lungs as oxygen becomes scarcer due to the strenuous effort. The promise at the end of the tunnel fuels your journey for another minute, quite like a perfidious light of an anglerfish. You leap across the edge of exhaustion, stopping when you’re depleted of energy, threatening to stumble and dismantle over the black tiles.

An alarm blares in the distance and the hallway is bathed in a pulsating shade of red. It warps the aseptic shadows into malevolent shapes. With no other choice, you resume your trek, albeit slower. The shuttering transition of crimson lighting and pitch black shadows makes the hallway appear alive, with a heartbeat of its own. It's as if you're walking through the gargantuan esophagus of a beast, stepping closer to your demise. 

The blaring sound explodes again with soaring intensity, threatening to puncture your eardrums. It distorts into an incessant ringing that skitters down your spine. A sound buried in that mangled cacophony makes itself clearer, taking the clear enunciation of discernible words.

A voice whispers through the walls, echoing the same sentence over and over through the speakers. It originates from a vanishing point behind and before you. Vibrating through the hallway, it rattles in your skin, your bones, inside your head.

_...Earth arrivals, proceed to the assigned post... _

_...Earth arrivals, proceed to the assigned post... _

_...Onboard SOS engineers, proceed to the assigned post... _

A choked gasp tears its way out of your throat at the same time you open your eyes. A series of hard thumps shatter the bleak silence. Your blurred vision shifts into focus only to be met with the menacing red illumination from the ceiling light fixtures. Sitting upright, you take notice of the lack of clothing on the lower half of your body. The memories return as detailed as a stack trace, allowing you to remember each misguided step that led you to this state of discomposure.

The red lighting crackles for a second and you're thrown back to the haunting hallway, paralyzed as your nightmare seems to manifest into reality. A chain of buzzes tremble from your datapad, each trilled  _ ping ping ping _ dissolving the illusion.   
  
You leap to your feet, scrambling to change into a fresh set of uniforms and investigate why the engineers are being called. For the first time you pay attention to the flagrant, crimson wound that glares on your wrist--a string of unread messages and unanswered pages on your datapad. Each word you read drops into the bottomless pit that is now your stomach.

_ [16:01:29]: Security Alert _

_ \- Communication Shield br44c4 compromised or unreachable _

_ \- Incident above the error limit of 1 _

_ \- Paging all sos-engineers on board _

_ \- Onboard SOS engineers, proceed to the assigned post _

_ [16:01:43]: Security Alert - immediate response required _

The knocking resumes. Faster. Louder. Your door splits open with a hiss, framing a second of silence before Myria is spilling a string of broken, exasperated sentences. She flails her hand around, urging you to move. “What  _ are  _ you doing? Have you not read your datapad? We need to go now and join the others.” 

“Calm down!” you hiss, gripping the edge of your dresser. “ I’m not sure I should go. Not after yesterday.” 

She bites back, words betraying her impatience, “If you got the messages...” Her eyes flicker down to your wrist. “...then you should be good enough to go. Would you rather not be dismissed than be needed and fail to provide your services?”

Her argument is the last push you need to become alert and responsive. Once you close the distance between you, she transitions to a brisk walk that’s skittering the limits of a full-blown run. She dashes over to the cabinet, detaching her headpiece and shrouding her face in its confine as she approaches the doorway.

Your voice is so low and withered that Myria stops, just to listen to you. “Look, Myr, if this happens again, you don’t have to wait for me. I appreciate it, but-” 

_ Don’t waste it on me _ , is what you want to howl, beg her not to disburse whatever rapport she had with the superiors, not to consider putting her career at risk in exchange for an act of undeserving kindness towards you. The sweltering revulsion of being shut out of your dream career in its infancy remains tucked in a shadowed corner of your mind, unprocessed and contained by means of a fragile intention. Having the guilt of dragging another to the gutter with you is a load you’re unwilling to bear.

Myria’s words unleash you from the spiral of regret and self-reproach, “Thank you for your appreciation, then. Where were you this morning? When I left for the first shift you were gone already,” she hisses, hammering the button to open the blast door with her fist, leaping over the threshold once the gap it’s wide enough.

The sight of the almost barren hall dissipates the panicked conjectures about careers, broken futures and guilt. It pauses everything, your breath, your thoughts, your spatial awareness, roping you in a wretched paralysis that begins when your blood solidifies into shards, slicing a blazing path of wintry pain as it flows through you.

A frenzied voice whispers at the back of your mind in the hopes to snap you out of this traumatized immobility, chanting at you to  _ focusfocusfocus _ on something else, something real to tether you to headspace where you can be more resilient. The answer comes in the form of the ticking clock that catches your eye when it marks another minute, fighting for attention at your peripheral vision.

Peering at the holographic numbers that glow on top of the doorframe, you’re surprised to find it’s still 1800. In your drowsy exhaustion, you figured you’d sleep for at least half a day, playing with the possibility of being late to your assignment. How  _ wonderful  _ would it be, to be punished for timeliness and tardiness on consecutive days? If the Commander is set in nitpicking questionable faults to discipline you for, why not disregard all rules then? If the punishment won’t fit the crime, maybe it’s on you to ensure it does.

The image of Kylo waiting by his door, watching as the clock strikes the allotted hour, anticipating an arrival that could never come, anger frothing in his core at another display of insubordination etches a tired grin on your face. You wonder if you should accede to your imprudent ideas, toy with his temper, retribute some of the aggravation he kindly has been sowing on the handful of times you’ve interacted.

What the worst that can happen? He’ll  _ kill _ you? If his words were honest, your impending execution had been postponed due to whatever strings he had managed to pull with General Hux. Still, it looms in your future, rooted deep like permafrost, a haunting possibility that should fray you into compliance. 

The morbid thought propels you forward, taking you by the hand over the doorstep, sobering you with its sickening reality; a fragmented life that served none of its purposes to completion.

A voice carries into your ears, the syllables of your name embodied into sound. Centering your focus to the form that stands a few steps ahead of you lessens the detachment that has everything to jeopardize the rest of your day.

“Are you ok? Please, we must hurry before the atrium is put on lockdown,” Myria insists. Her voice betrays a turmoil of impatience and compassion, fighting to keep both balanced and not say anything that she’ll regret later. A bow would seem slouched compared to the way her body is thrumming with poor restrained tension, skin feverish with adrenaline.

_ ‘Are you ok? _ ’ Such a simple question, yet your mind is void of answers. Dryness lodges in your throat in place of even a feeble attempt to reply. She waited for you, when she could have parted without a second thought, instead preferring to show camaraderie to someone who had all the potential of a crashing program.

Another step forward abridges the distance between you, a curt nod is all she needs--and all you can give her--to advance without looking back. The faint sound of her helmet being activated makes its way up to you.

Dashing to keep up with her, you struggle not to lose her amongst the crowd, even more so when engineers begin to flood the corridors. Hushed voices morph in a collective sound; reverbing into unintelligible sentences that communicate the same thing: fear. The First Order runs on it, fear being what keeps its personnel in check: fear of reconditioning, of demotion, of death.

Shrouded faces turn to look at you as you sprint by them. Are they leering at the two officers who are disrespecting the hallway moving protocols, you wonder, or are they inwardly gaping at you, the one who was escorted out by Commander Ren and somehow survived?   
  
You skid to a stop when reaching the next intersection, the two of you taking the lead until you come into an emptier area. 

“Report says the Resistance is almost getting through the first layer of shields. They’re about to close the vault.”

As the lights bleed into a shade of red and alarms toll in the distance, your heart falters for a moment, wilted with terror. Moisture leaves your mouth and each gasped breath is a struggle. The chilled air frosts a path of agony as you try to breathe in through your nose.

Strengthening your resolve, you push the task at hand to the forefront of your mind. You avert your gaze to the ground slowing down to a jog, but unwilling to let your panic shut you down. Myria’s ankles serve as your compass as you sprint through the final portion of your journey towards the atrium.

You’re so concentrated in running the attack mitigations strategies through your head, that you miss the moment she comes to a stop. Still moving forward, you crash against a white form that had rounded the corner at the same time as you.

The impact catapults you backwards, canting your body towards the ground. A pair of firm hands clutches your forearms, breaking the dangerous trajectory of the fall. The stormtrooper allows the hold to sustain for a few moments as they make sure you’re steady. Behind them, a gigantic soldier halts, standing out from any other frontline personnel you had ever seen.

Instead of the regular, milk-white armoring used in mass by the First Order, this one is adorned with chromed plates, reflecting the abhorrent red dusk like a deceiving optical phenomena. Their stature rivals Kylo’s, you’d estimate they’re  _ taller _ even.

Your eyes trail up the armor of the one who helped you, stopping at the polished helmet. The black surface of its visor reflects your mortified face back at you. A flush heats up your cheeks and neck, spreading like a rash across your skin. It intensifies the more you remain in place, mouth gaping open and close a few times. Sucking air through your teeth, you gather enough breath to mutter an apology, but the trooper steals the first word: 

“Are you ok, Officer?” The tone doesn’t have the bite you had come to expect from your previous interactions with the soldiers, neither is it overtly concerned. A hint of familiarity rings in their voice, but you can’t pin its origin just yet. You commit the doubt to your memory, to join the pile of incertitude that keeps you awake at night.

“Yes, I am. I’m sorry for bumping into you, I should have paid more attention,” you answer, tugging your arms away from their helpful, but now unnecessary hold.

“ _ Clearly _ .” Two clipped steps drum against the polished tiles, betraying the sheer weight and strength of their owner. Encroaching the space between you and the stormtrooper, the silver soldier spoke for the first time. The robotic monotone voice still manages to crackle with derision. “FN-2187, move along. Perhaps you should also leave and see to your duties,  _ Officer _ . A week of awareness reconditioning would do you well.” With that, the towering chromed trooper marches away, taking their subordinate with them, leaving you free to move on.

You allow your gaze to linger on the retreating pair for a moment, finding that who you now know to be FN-2187 has their head tilted to the side, visor pointed at you as well.

“Come on, we’re almost there!” Myria calls your name, her body vibrating with hurry as she strains to remain still while waiting for you. 

Resuming your frenzied dash, you scurry after her, worming through the next blast door in your path. You join the crowd of hurried officers who are now swarming the hallways. They wear different states of disarray, some sporting wrinkled, half-fastened uniforms, carrying helmets under their arms as they head together to the main atrium. 

One of the protocols in the face of a security breach is to assign all ship operating systems engineers to the same area to keep communication centralized and without unnecessary hurdles. An effective tactic to stop harmful spread of misinformation when teams were kept apart across the base. It also maintained those who are present accountable in case of any leaks of classified data. 

Upon entering the chamber, you’re again startled by the sheer magnitude of it; an AT-AT would seem as big as a tooke when under the grey durasteel confine. Eight hexagonal doors flank the equally hexagonal room; engineers pouring from all sorts of directions; like blood flowing inside the frigid heart of Starkiller.

Light floods from the outside, far surpassing the artificial luminance provided by the pill-shaped fixtures that dot the walls. Snow roars from behind the viewport that sprawls from the ground to the tall ceiling, flocking into all directions and collecting at the bottom edges of the window. 

Myria and you take your place at the back row. 

All doors whirr shut--a sound that resembles a dying breath--what follows is an oppressive silence, as all voices dwindle in order to hear the spokesperson at the end of the room. A blue hologram rises, mirroring the movements of the person it belongs to, surpassing all present officers in height and width. 

“The Resistance has attempted to override one of our remote comm clusters. We don’t know yet how compromised it is, but it’s unreachable as of now. It’s safe to assume the fleet that’s tethered to the cluster can and  _ will _ suffer a cyber-attack. It is your job to monitor and stop any attempts. No one leaves this vault until the threat is nullified.” Teris paces back and forth, amplified eyes scanning the restless crowd. “Proceed to your workstations according to the number that has been sent to your datapads.”

At the end of her message, the hologram shuts off, disintegrating into blue shards. Teris is no less intimidating in her true size, marching across the platform towards her workbench. A flock of officers trail after her, keeping cautious distance, looking like a disjointed raft of ducks. You avert your gaze, lest she finds you amongst the crowd. 

On cue, datapads light up all around you, red glimmers that last for a second before extinguishing as embers blown away by the wind. Their owners break the neat grid formation, scampering to their assigned posts with a new sense of purpose.

You wait.

The crowd spreads out, removing the comforting anonymity of being an unimportant face in a sea of people. Gazing to the silent device on your wrist, you’re met with a black screen. Tired eyes peer back at you, betraying a harrowing sense of uncertainty. 

Myria lingers for another second, offering you a sympathetic, pitiful look--at least that’s what you assume she’s sporting from beneath her helmet-- and a compassionate shoulder squeeze. Her fingers hesitate for a moment, gaze searching for any sign of life on your datapad with almost as much    
yet she lets you go, turning her back to you in order to assume her post.

Despite the ample space that becomes available as people move to their positions, an invisible, unmeasurable weight crushes your chest. It extinguishes your breath with each oozing second. Your gaze dashes from door to door, following the chiseled shape of the room, cycling one, two, three times and finding no viable exit route. 

A glimmer catches your attention out of the corner of your eye--the screen of your datapad coming alight for an instant. Hope fills your heart, surging through your body like a current. As you tilt your wrist to examine the device closer, the once joyful anticipation sours, leaving a bitter taste at the bottom of your throat.

It was just a trick of light. Your datapad remains off, providing no more usefulness than a radio comm. The last officers who staggered a while longer take their places, assuming their role in the intricate, sprawling machine of Starkiller Base. All that's left is you. 

_ I shouldn’t have come here. _

Your mouth falls open in an attempt to inhale more air and shine clarity in your overwhelmed mind. There's one thing left for you to do: cross over to the bridge where Teris and General Hux stand. A simple, but not  _ easy _ feat. At first there's a small delay between your intent and your motion. Each step forward is a conscious act in which you need to bargain with yourself to continue.

The loss of your helmet is thrown back at your face whenever you pass a workstation where a pair or engineers are absorbed in their craft. While uniforms are an expendable commodity, helmets are different. They're built to the specs of its owner's head and face, calibrated to their eyes, encoded with an unique ID representing its wearer.

Not something one can fetch out of a rack. They're made to endure. Maybe you should have taken the moment yours broke as an omen that your career would be just as short-lived.

When reaching the edge that delimitates the start of the bridge, you halt.

It shouldn’t be  _ hard _ to take another step, but the memories of the previous day flourish again, exuding their putrid smell and coating your tongue with pungent shame. The tips of your boots hovers inches away from the threshold, this invisible line that seems to be the boundary between life and death.

_ Fuck this. _

One step at a time takes you over the passage, heart hammering on your chest every time the Sargeant’s eyes leave her work. 

The single solace is that no one’s paying attention to you. 

There, at the end of the walkway is Teris’ workstation, flanked by heaps of reports, a surprising amount of clutter that litters her desk. It almost covers the thin monitor that’s flashing every other second with ship trajectory projections, star maps, system grids and navigation logs.

You approach her desk, waiting for a lull in her frenzied work to call out for her attention.

As her eyes stop on the form that’s hovering on her peripheral vision, a scowl etches on her face, a glower so clear that you’re certain the ones at the opposite corner of the room can see it just as well as you can. She slams down the file she had been sorting through, causing an adjacent set of papers to clatter to the ground.

She does nothing, the small inconvenience not enough to warrant a glance in its direction. You open your mouth to start the small speech you had drafted, but she’s faster.

"Officer-" Teris interrupts her sentence, deeming your surname unworthy of enunciation. "- _ what _ are you doing here?" She shoves a folder that's overflowing with reports into the overwhelmed arms of the nearest assistant; who also stops to pick up the mess on the floor.

"Sergeant, a notice was sent to my datapad requesting my presence amongst all engineers gathered here. However, I've received no further instructions and wasn't assigned any workstation or partner." Your voice leaves your throat in a garbled thrum, tone reaching highs and lows of an unmodulated radio signal.

A muscle twitches in her jaw. She creases her brows, a sharp line emerging between then. "How could that happen if your access was revoked yesterday? Nothing should have been sent. General Hux saw to that  _ himself _ ." Her arms are bent at the elbows, fingers interwoven in front of her. Such is the silence inside the atrium that the sound of bending leather reaches your ears as Teris clenches her hands.

You don’t miss the callousness that drips from her voice, distilling a fresh dose of frustrated appallment. What would you gain by lying for such a minor thing? A wisp of annoyance fumes in your mouth, suppressed by the harsh bite of your upper teeth on your tongue. "I can show the messages on my device." Such is the force you’re applying on your fingers as you interlace them, that you’re feeling your rapid heartbeat 

She nods, mouth set in a hard line. You wonder if her features are always locked in this position.

You raise your wrist, tilting it so the holoprojection is visible to her.

Her eyes narrow as she scans through the messages, lips curling into a tighter display of contempt. For good measure she reads again, diverting her attention to the datapad at her desk once she finishes. She taps the screen, the pads of her fingers rippling the image with the force of her grip. "Something is wrong with your credentials."

Letting your hand fall back to your side, you curl it in a fist but remember to relax it after a moment, not desiring to appear threatening to your superior. “I don’t understand-”

Teris interrupts you, casting aside the diminutive pool of patience she once had. “Your work records have been reassigned. It appears that two changes were executed at the same time, neither of them running to completion.”

“So, that means…” you trail off, hoping she'll fill in the gap in your train of thought. 

“You’ll have to bring this  _ issue _ either to Commander Ren or General Hux as they are the ones responsible. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have serious matters to attend to.” Teris pours back her attention into her work, snapping her fingers at the hovering assistant who returned with a fresh pile of reports. Her eyes flicker to you for a second, a veiled warning threaded in their depth. “I do not need to remind you to stay out of the way, do I? I’ll grant you the  _ privilege _ of exiting this room. Be careful.”

A crude retort dies on your tongue, tumbling down your throat and dissolving into an acrid burn that spreads over your thorax. While you could tolerate your demotion, being spoken to as if you were an incompetent, unprepared, bumbling fool is something else entirely.

"The reminder won't be necessary, Sergeant. I will take my leave." Your words are discarded as she doesn't bother to acknowledge them. You retreat across the silent floor, anger swirling inside of you like a wave ready to crash at the bottom of a towering cliff. At this point you’re willing to punch all mountains in Ilum to the ground. Rage spreads all over your body, heating you up like a furnace, you’re surprised there’s no smoke coming out of your heated skin.

Behind you, another hologram flickers to life, catching your attention. The room is bathed in a flare of blue light, it fills the space from ground to ceiling as a pixelated tapestry. It’s a massive star sector, gilded with colorful lines and circles that represent all starships currently flying. Looking away, spectres of the glowing lines remain burned on your vision for a few more seconds as you walk towards the back of the room.

A series of muted beeps, hushed voices and mechanical typing sounds serve as background noise to your internal turmoil. You gnaw on your lower lip, teeth imprinting slits into your skin, pressing hard enough to cross the threshold of pain, a welcome distraction to the useless outburst that itches to explode out of you. What could the First Order want from you? Had they launched an audit and scrutinized your actions, finding them worthy of punishment, you'd be more accepting to these restrictions.

Instead, you must  _ take _ it all in stride, bow your head and accept that you possess no leverage over your life. A noise rises above others, taking you a few seconds to realize it's the sound of your steps, rippling on the slotted tiles as you pace them with more force than needed. You march to the nearest blast door, letting out a gritted sigh as it opens, letting the hydraulic hiss of the mechanism smother the wordless complaint.

Crossing into this nameless hallway, you’re heading the opposite direction you came from, shoulders rigid and tight, a throbbing ache on your temple, where a vein dilates slightly more than the others. Knowing that almost everyone you know is back there, hands-deep into the type of work you’ve devoted your life to do while you’re haunting the corridors like a meaningless wraith strikes a chord within you. 

The chase of a duty, the quest to find purpose is what nourished your life after you were brought to the First Order. Without that, what are you? Questions that you’ve had years of conditioning to suppress begin to encroach your thoughts, about to shred open wounds you’d rather forget.

The poignant sound of a new message shrieks through the barren silence that clings to you. Your eyes scan the message, lifting your wrist so close to your face that the words are blurred at the edges:

_ Your presence is required in my office, at your earliest convenience. _

_ \-- General Hux _

A million questions spring in your mind as you worm through the bowels of Starkiller. The second meeting in General Hux’s office has you no more prepared than the first. The man unnerves you, in every sense of the word. While Commander Ren terrifies you, his menacing predisposition seems more honest; raw, unpredictable and untamed, but never shielded from others.

On the other hand, the General keeps his visage insipid and his true opinions coverted. In the few of his speeches you were present, you didn’t miss the way his glacial eyes always remained clouded, lifeless unless he was frothing at the mouth and spitting words of galactic annihilation. 

Your mind wanders to Kylo’s words on the previous day, curious how it already feels a lifetime ago. He threatened your life all the same, though in a different manner than General Hux. Yet in a way the Commander--regardless of his motives--earned you a few more weeks, or months from being obliterated by firing squad. How dreadful would it be to die thanks to a man who could not be more  _ bored _ at the prospect of taking your life like General Hux.

The door to his work room opens as soon as you step close enough, eliciting a shiver that creeps on your skin. When you cross the threshold, that same door closes, trapping you in his confine. If fear weren’t pooling in your veins you’d laugh at how terrified you were. What’s the worst he can do? Assemble a stormtrooper firing squad? Smash your skull with his stimcaf container?

Hux has his gaze trained on a report, not bothering to look at you as you approach his desk.

“General Hux,” you greet. Even if you’re looking  _ down _ on him, the way his eyes scan you invert the scenario. The ice outside has more warmth than his continuous stare.

He voices your title and name, words sounding untuned and  _ wrong _ when leaving his mouth. The ashen tone of his skin clashes with his dark uniform, his eyes as frigid as the snow outside. He gestures to his left, his slender hand sweeping the air in an elegant arch. “Please, have a seat.”

You abide to his request, settling yourself on the cold, hard chair, never quite finding a position that makes you comfortable. The height is not right, neither are the armrests, you settle for letting your forearms fall at your lap, fingers fidgeting with the cuff of your sleeve.

Hux's voice is sharp and inquisitive. “It has just been reported to me that there was a less than amicable interaction between you and Sergeant Teris,” he drawls, drinking in your response to his words.

A cloud of static frizzles on your skin, all nerves alert in reaction to his enquire. Such an innocent sentence, yet loaded with opportunities for you to misstep and add more infringements to your budding file.

“I came to her to clarify a misunderstanding, as she is… was my previous supervisor and I was certain she would be the most qualified to answer.” You swallow, hating how unsure your voice sounds. “In fact, General, she advised me to speak with you or Commander Ren. I was on my way to find him.”

“How opportune that I am available to assist you.” His eyes glint with the kindness of a predator about to ensnare its prey. “ _ Tell  _ me, officer, what is the issue?”

Rigidness spreads through your body, straightening your spine, straining every muscle in a way you think you won’t ever be able to rise from this cold chair. “I appreciate your  _ help _ , General. However, I believe it would be more appropriate to seek Commander Ren’s assistance given that I’m part of his service.” 

“I’m afraid the Commander is not available.” The lightness of his tone contrasts with the concerned expression he attempts to portray. “To your _luck_ , I just saved you from a pointless search for him. He has left on an assignment, and I can’t inform how long he will be gone with certainty.”

“Oh.” The thought that Kylo Ren has left should fill you with relief. 

Hux’s voice pins your attention back to him. “Was today you first day working under the Commander?”

_ What are you trying to get at?  _ “Yes, General, today I started  _ on _ his service.” The end of your sentence is sharper than it should be, causing your breath to hitch on your throat. Would he let this slide?

"I trust you're finding useful opportunities to apply your skills. As you've experienced yourself, the Commander is rather fond of doing things his own manner, I wonder what duties he has assigned to you." He flips through another page, gracing you with a pointed look.

"I've been delegated appropriate tasks for my skill set, General."  _ I’m not really lying. _

"There's a state-of-the-art squad of fleet engineers that have been set out to work on supporting Commander Ren. He has refused any peripheral services to his ship other than mechanics. Yet he demanded to instill you to serve a probationary period under him. Why?" The General closes the file he was reading, the abruptness of the motion causing a strand of hair to fall out of place.

"I- I cannot speculate on the Commander’s reasoning." Why do you feel guarded, as if you should protect Kylo Ren's privacy? Why does it feel like you're being asked to betray him?

“Of course. Nevertheless you must agree this poises quite a riddle.  _ Why _ would he go through such lengths to spare you? I’ve seen him kill for less. I’ve seen collateral damage, to crew and ship alike. Yet here you are.” There’s a feral, dangerous glint to his blue eyes… When did his inquiry start turning into an inquisition?

_ What’s his problem?  _ “Yes, General.”

“I believe you must wonder that yourself. Surely you know this arrangement won’t last forever. It should end in two ways: he will either grow frustrated and kill you, or he won’t be satisfied with your performance and then the First Order will carry out your execution.” Hux takes a sip of his stimcaf, letting his words stir in your mind.

“I have enough confidence in my work that Commander Ren won’t be disappointed.” Your hands curl around the arms of the chair, hoisting yourself closer to the edge of the seat.

His smile is sharp, teeth glinting under the artificial, lifeless light. “Officer, don’t be naive enough to think it can all be resumed to your work. It’s beyond that. I’d advise you to prepare for the fallout, but if risk-assessment was one of your assets, we would not find ourselves in this situation.” 

“Thank you for your counsel, General.”

“You have established disorder in an otherwise distinguished department. The Ship Operating System division had never suffered such a breach of ranking and protocol until your little  _ stint _ . No matter how competent you think you are, in the slim chance you conquer the Commander’s favour, there isn’t much you’ll be able to do to earn your previous position.”

“I see, General Hux. If the Commander finds my work satisfactory, I’m sure he’d vouch for me in the slim chance I wished to resume my duties under the department.” He doesn’t need to know how every fiber of your body wishes for you to come back.

“Would he?” He shuffles through a new stack of reports, running his slender fingers across the crisp page. The pause fills the quiet room, stealing the very breath out of your lungs. “If he did, how far do you think his word would go when against those who worked to the bone to build the First Order from the frail ashes of the Empire? Would he convince the ones who wrote the very protocols you’ve disrespected?”

You shrug, looking up at him. “I think it could go pretty far, given that he  _ persuaded _ you to postpone my impending execution and allow me to work in his service.”

“It would serve you well not to comment on matters you were not privy to.” His voice oscillates, nearing a shout in some moments, rage blooming under his skin in the form of a red rash.

“You’re right, General. I can’t explain why Commander Ren chose me any more than I can explain why  _ you  _ permitted it," you reply. The slightest twitch of his eyes pumps your veins with vindication. "Is there anything else I can help you with?” There isn't a whisper of solicitude in your tone, nor an attempt to pretend.

The neutral expression on Hux’s face melts like wax out of a candle, morphing into a scowl that suits him better. “Leave. Don’t think that you’re somehow shielded behind the power of who you work for. I would also advise you to be more attentive to your datapad. That is, if you still wish to be informed of what happens in the First Order.” At that he allows a small curl of his lips; a silent challenge.

_ Back-stabbing, disgraceful bastard. _

Leaving his office, you say no other word as the upheaval inside you clutches your throat in its unforgiving grasp.

Every cautious step that takes you away frees your heart a bit more to beat again. It speeds up into overdrive, pumping so fast that you don’t even know what to do with rattling that seems it will shatter your ribs at any moment. Amongst the noise, amongst the chaotic stream of thoughts that scrolls on your mind, one thought is clear: you wished  _ Kylo Ren  _ were there, with you, even if for a moment.

A treacherous thought echoes among this unfamiliar feeling of longing.

Should you count on Kylo Ren to help you if you ever need it?

Would he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Kylo this week, but even he has to tend to his duties and leave RC to the wolves.
> 
> Well, I'm so happy to be posting this! I feel like I'm getting better at plotting, being patient and laying out some groundwork. As always, I'd love to know your thoughs, reactions, anything of note you'd like to comment on the story. I'm open to complaints as well, code-review has grinded my soul already.
> 
> Hope you all have a wonderful week and take care!
> 
> My Tumblr DM's/askbox are also open, albeit I'm on a break from actively reblogging/liking things on there. [https://clumsycopy.tumblr.com/]()


	5. A Gesture of Goodwill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hold on your throat seizes and your famished lungs make themselves present, burning with every rise and fall of your chest. "Commander," you gasp between frantic breaths, "you’re back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> True to my promise (that I never told anyone lol) another chapter released before December.  
> Warnings: bloodplay, choking, Kylo Ren Is Not Nice

That cyber attack orchestrated by the Resistance isn’t the last. 

It’s a warning. 

That same evening, the engineers stop the threat and track its source to some waterhole of the Outer Rim. Five days later, another shield is compromised. The First Order rushes to thwart the attack faster, cutting the response time in half, as Myria tells you over dinner. Then, a third one strikes a few days afterwards, albeit it doesn’t scratch the surface of the new defense algorithms. 

Myria gushes about the small division that Teris elected to be on call to handle any new threats. The group is lean, your roommate being one of the chosen, along with your former preceptor, Alen.

Due to the barrage of attacks, core systems of Starkiller and its fleet are being refactored. Old, legacy code gets replaced in favour of newer, faster approaches. This major overhaul is everything you’d ever dreamed of, a wrapped gift with a bow for any ship operating systems engineer: to destroy and re-design from the ground up. 

All engineers have been scheduled to double shifts, with an officer-to-workstation ratio of 2:1, making each line of code get double-checked so nothing slips through. 

Everyday you come closer to regretting your decision of forcing the update into Kylo’s TIE Silencer, but a persistent voice yells ‘you did the right thing’, and you’re more than inclined to believe it. 

Each passing night, you're losing fragments of sleep, rising from your bed earlier than you’re accustomed to. The minutes you’re missing snowball into an hour, then another. After that you disable the alarm-clock, frustrated at the decreasing numbers that greet you when you awake.

As the days go by, Hux’s words fester in your mind, laving poisoned whispers that rattle down your spine whenever you have a moment to yourself. The rotten doubts take root much faster than you're willing to admit. What if he's right? How much political power does Kylo Ren have? Why on the stars would you ever think he'd dispend any effort towards helping you? Not having these answers, or anyone to provide them gives you free reign to shred your mind with anxiety. You come up with endless catastrophic scenarios, backed by a failed logic that you can’t refute no matter how much harm it brings.

The Commander's absence adds another layer of dread; every day that he's not there carves the abyss that splits your mind a little deeper. He's absent when you arrive at 0800 as well as when you leave, yet every time you stand upon his blast door, waiting for it to open, you hope he will be there, looming behind the thickness of the durasteel. Then, as you enter his quarters, the memories of his ministrations elicit a shudder across the breadth of your skin, trickling down the nape of your neck.

Your body responds to any and every thought of him as if your mind manifested his touch into reality. His presence clings to you, stronger at night, when you’re shut in your bedroom, staring up at the ceiling with eyes tricked by the swirling darkness.

In these moments, the ghost of his presence teases your bare flesh. You swear the warmth that heats you up from this seemingly invisible force is real. It grips your throat, jaw, chin, thighs, yet there’s never evidence of it. It leaves you burning, limbs slackened, drops of sweat gliding down your temples, dampening the back of your neck. Such heat shouldn’t be normal, not in the perpetual, wuthering winter that assails Starkiller.

It leaves you no other choice but to rush to the refresher, drown in a cold shower, letting the frigid water soothe your flesh until it aches for an entirely different reason. Even when you return to your room, shivers continue to racket across your spine every so often. You throw your duvet to the floor, letting it pool to the side of the bed, riding your mattress of everything save for the thin fitted sheet and a pillow.

Then, you sweep a hand down the curve of your breasts, past the slope of your stomach, brushing your thumb across your aching clit. As your fingers work to snap the tensioned coil inside you, an amalgamation of broken sounds and ruptured images streak under your shuttered eyelids. 

Kylo Ren standing above you, with a hand trapping your jaw, the other buried knuckles deep into your dripping cunt. Him panting against your ear, words garbled into indistinguishable noise. Sometimes, you pretend to hear praise; not a sentiment you’re habituated to receive, flooding you with an astonishing sense of pride, thighs quaking as the Commander eulogizes you.

On other occasions he’s demeaning you, every scornful comment on your most buried fears stripping you raw. Even so you're thrilled to be eliciting such a reaction, perhaps in a bashful hope that he’s affected by you in the same way that you’re by him.

Regardless if he’s praising or degrading you in your imagination, he’d finish what he started, granting you the climax he denied before. When the crest of your release hits you, your lungs convulse, breathing seeming an impracticable task as fulgent, wavering pleasure explodes in your core. It causes your fists to tighten, toes to curl, eyes to roll back, breath rattling against your lips.

After the pleasure subsidizes to a gentle thrum, you’re drained, consciousness fading into dreamless rest with ease.

If only you could fall asleep and _keep_ sleeping, you’d be less miserable during the day. There's only so many times you can bear to look at the haunting face that stares back at you in the mirror. 

Once you leave your shared residence on the next day, you enjoy the solitude of walking along nearly empty corridors, watching the efficient exchange between night and day squadrons.

As everything else on the battlestation, daily cycles are artificial and independent of the bleak suns of Ilum. Starkiller is a self contained, durasteel snowglobe impervious to whatever rages on outside. The running joke is that the whole planet could burn to ashes, the plains of snow could catch fire and no one would ever notice.

_I bet the snowtroopers wouldn’t realize something was wrong until it was too late. They can't shoot a wampa even if it stood two feet away._

You laugh to yourself at the absurdity of relying on any of those troopers for anything. This morning seems more cheerful than the past string of days. Promising. Yet, as you walk to Kylo Ren’s quarters, your smile withers. The hallways are still empty, you had not seen signs of activity for a long time now. You’d even take a run-in with one of the Knights, as long as you had any way of obtaining information about the Commander.

The door to his residence stands before you and there goes your heart, threatening to pound itself out of your ribcage. _He’s not there, he’s not there, he’s fucking not there. Why do I want him to be?_

As you enter, gaze sweeping across the bright room, you find yourself alone. Not that you’re _not_ used to it, now that you almost never see your roommate because of your opposite schedules. But you miss your old routine. Despite what many believe, programming is an inherently social practice, made in a collective fashion, with end-users in mind. It’s faster, yes, to do it all alone, but you long for the learning, the fast-paced environment, the thrill of debugging something on the fly with a group.

Sighing, you settle at your desk, resting your cheek against your knuckles. With the free hand you navigate through the open tabs on your workstation, eyes sifting through the instructions you left for yourself on the previous day.

_What do we have here?_

Looking at code with fresh eyes is at the best, jarring. 

Every concrete or possible mistake jumps out, making you question how much time you had wasted the previous day. It’s a fine balance between a sense of grandiosity and the realization that you might be the stupidest sentient being on the whole planet. You document possible design decisions, places where a vulnerability might show up and how to address them. It’s an intricate equilibrium of not leaving the new operating system unguarded and at the same time not bloating it with unnecessary code, leading to something harder to maintain in the long run.

Rolling your shoulders, you tilt your neck to one side and back, straightening your posture, leaning closer to the screen. As you type each new line, repeating the cycle of programming, testing and reassessing, the morning slips through your fingers. 

The clock strikes midday, and you log off the workstation, making your way out of the Commander’s accommodations. His quarters are far from the main cafeteria, perhaps by coincidence or design. You deem it too wasteful to walk back and forth almost opposite sectors of the base just to have lunch. Still, you can't bring yourself to eat in the common area of Kylo Ren's residence, to sit at his table or rummage through his kitchen. The thought of doing any of these acts causes your face to scrunch in disgust.

_Oh, but it’s alright to fantasize of him every single night. That makes a lot of sense._

Walking out of the corridor area where he and his Knights live, you challenge yourself with guessing the identifying tags on each door you pass by. For the past weeks you had taken to roaming these hallways, learning who patrols the entryways, which rooms are storage, sanitation, admin or abandoned. As a result, you had committed all possible paths to your memory, iterating again and again until you can get anywhere you wish without thinking.

You know exactly where you want to go. All roads lead to Coruscant… but in your little world, they lead somewhere else. You just need to push past the existential dread, your idiotic thoughts that spin a thousand miles a second, tumbling in your head in a flurry of panic. By now, you’re _almost_ used to it, clenching your jaw and quickening your pace until you find your way to your newest sanctuary.

Pushing the access cylinder on the console at the side of the door, the durasteel splits open, allowing you to slip inside. When it shuts behind you, it shields you inside a refuge of blissful silence.

To your relief, the room is empty, though it is colder than usual. There’s nothing extraordinary about it. It’s devoid of any furniture and perhaps purpose, save for a viewport and a control panel that coils around a wall. When the door closes, you’re shut in a world of your own, the droning noise of Starkiller eclipsed by the pounding of the machinery before you. An assembly line sits right outside the transparisteel, with rows and rows of conveyor belts tracking across the stretch of the open area.

The window panels shine, so clean that one could think that it is hollow. You settle on a cross-legged position over the floor, resting an elbow over your knee, propping a hand under your chin for support. Below you, a group of AT-ST mechanics trudge over to a half-destroyed AT-AT, cutting off destroyed, obliterated parts with a plasma soldering device.

Gigantic robotic claws sway in a discordant rhythm, grasping and pulling at heaps of spare parts, soldering and grinding and assembling until the final product rises to be on level with the transparent panels. Neat lines of inactive AT-AT’s sprawl over the hangar below, warping your sense of scale. Are they this enormous or is everything else so small? The ceiling fixtures responsible for moving the walkers around whirr to life, sliding the newly assembled from right to left, passing by just a few inches away from the window.

Even if this private observatory seems big to you, it is no more than a tile on the wall when compared to the hissing factory below. Operators in AT-ST's march around the hangar, supervising the construction of the larger transports, looking like womp rats running around a herd of banthas.

An AT-AT is a colossal monument of death by itself, yet it pales in comparison to the far larger mechanisms responsible for constructing it. 

Somehow it frightens you more to be in the presence of what transpires behind the curtain, knowing that no matter how many combat walkers are destroyed, this beating war heart will keep pumping out more. How many planets have bled in the name of an ingot of durasteel? You clench your fists to stop this unwanted trail of thought, that's not why you're here.

When you sit by the window, breath fogging the transparisteel, watching the walkers get assembled, it’s one of the only moments your mind quiets for a while and you can just _be_.

A shrill, ear-splitting noise punctures the silence, reverbing in the barren room.

You whirl around, eyes tracing the smoldering path of molten durasteel that's being carved on the blast door. A red plasma blade juts out from the slash, casting the room in its crimson lightning. The scattered droplets of water that litter the surface of the viewport now look like blood. It might as well be yours. 

Breath freezes in your lungs, head pounding with panic at the sight of a material that can withstand explosions getting wrecked with such ease.

_He's back._

A confusing entanglement of relief and utter panic battles for control in your mind. Of course, neither one thrives, leaving you in an incompetent state of inertia, stare bound to the destruction before you.

Kylo’s weapon disappears from the door, only to return on its lower left quadrant and slice a way from the bottom up. This demolishes the locks attached to the wall, mechanisms creaking until a final snap resounds when they're cut in two. A myriad of sparks drizzle from the gashes as he slices more and more and more. They explode into popping bursts of light that leap forward and fade as they reach the mirrored floor.

An acrid, pungent odor of molten metal hits your nostrils, overpowering the unventilated space. Glowing lacerations and exposed, blown out circuitry litter the crumbling surface of the door. Its whole frame shakes as the Commander slams his foot against the weakest portion. You're certain he can obliterate whatever is left with his bare hands if he wants to.

Shrapnel flies off in several directions as if blown by the strongest wind. What is left of the door stands crooked to the side, mangled to half the size it once had, crumpled like a sheet of paper. Kylo stands among the wreckage. One hand clutches his flaring weapon, the other spread open, trembling in the same frequency as the debris that hovers a few inches above the ground. As he lowers his arm, those carbonized shards scatter on the floor, turning into dust under his boots.

Kylo Ren stalks into the room, past the destroyed threshold of the door and it’s as if galactic annihilation has descended with him.

He's feral, covered in dirt, blood, dusted in ashes, clothes ripped by what you assume to be blaster hits. The edge of his cape is still flaming, blazing a trail of smoke. Each ominous sound of his footsteps ring inside your head, far louder than the assembly line behind you. The rest of the galaxy might as well not exist in that eternal instant when you set eyes upon his shrouded face.

Your eyes widen, taking in the layers of grime, scratches and dirt that litter his mask. The chrome engravings are no longer reflective, tainted red and brown, with soil accumulating in between the grooves. His cowl is tattered to shreds, coiled around the span of his shoulders by a few loose threads. The rest of his clothes don't fare much better, fabric split just as much as the wounded flesh beneath it. 

The red beam of his lightsaber still blazes, scorching the floor as Kylo rakes it over the tiles. He extinguishes the distance between you, hand lifted in your direction, fingers curved as if cradling your throat from afar. 

A crack echoes into the chamber and it takes you a second to process that you were flung backwards, hitting the transparent panel behind you. Air flees your body, soon your head begins to pound, blood rushing in the tunnels of your ears as you struggle with the familiar constriction on your windpipe.

At this point you shouldn't be surprised, but the sheer size of his figure still astonishes you. When he's near enough to touch you, he chooses to slide the crimson blade forward with his other hand, stopping just as it's about to touch your feet.

"This is where I find you." A mix of soot and ashes cascades off his shoulders, floating gracefully towards the floor. "Abandoning your duties."

You mean to reply. Something. A word. Anything. A coherent exclamation, a greeting, a hum of acknowledgement. Instead, you find there's no cognitive activity that allows any sentence to form in your mouth, even if nothing restricted your neck, opting to worry your lip between your teeth.

Kylo growls, a low thrumming noise that dissolves into static, resonating throughout your bones and eliciting a surge of wetness between your legs. 

"You will answer me when I address you." He thrusts his lightsaber forward, puncturing the space by your boots. The sudden movement frightens you, pulling a gasp out of your throat, legs spreading to avoid the heat of the blade. Burning heat emanated by the weapon reaches your ankles, accompanied by cracking sounds as the transparisteel starts to splinter.

The hold on your throat seizes and your famished lungs make themselves present, burning with every rise and fall of your chest. "Commander," you gasp between frantic breaths, "you’re back." 

Your awed tone stops him in his tracks. Kylo lowers one arm to his side, while keeping the other elevated. The grip on his lightsaber tightens, fingers shuddering when a twitch sweeps across that hand.

" _Well_ observed, officer." Kylo laughs, a deep sound that escapes his vocoder almost unscathed. "I assumed you'd be able to overcome your self-destructive tendencies, that following a simple order wouldn’t be an issue again. Yet you’ve surprised me."

A line creases between your eyebrows while you sift through you anything you might have missed. "Order? Commander Ren, I don’t know what you’re-"

Kylo propels the weapon upwards, extinguishing your train of thought. "Don’t be disingenuous." 

The blade now sits between your calves, way closer than you could ever want. You grit your teeth, wild eyes seeking the darkness of Kylo’s mask. "I’m not. I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir."

"Is that so? Do you not pay attention to your datapad? Have you lost it as well? I ordered you to wait for my arrival and deliver a report on your alleged progress." he drawls, words overflowing with scathing mockery.

His explanation adds to your puzzlement, as you hadn't received anything as of this morning. "No, I didn't get any orders on my devices. I wouldn’t fail my duties by _not_ showing up."

Kylo scoffs. "Reckless. Unreliable. I expect nothing and you still disappoint me."

The admission induces an unexpected tightness in your chest, a loathsome sentiment that creeps up your features as they turn blank, eyes darting to the floor.

"I should have let Hux handle you." He shuffles closer, steps tuned to your subdued breathing. "It's more than you deserve."

"I don’t deserve any of this." A muscle twitches in your jaw and a heavy exhale leaves your nostrils. "Let's go, then. I'm tired of your admonishments. We can both end this. I’m sure the General will be _elated_ at the prospect of signing the execution papers, as that was _his_ intent since the beginning. Then, you’ll never have to see me again," you hiss.

His mask tilts to the side, emphasizing another thin silver graze on his helmet. "Am I supposed to care? To feel pity? Strange how angry you are… yet _relieved_ that I'm here." His tone bears a tentative curiosity, less sharp than it was before.

Fighting the urge to roll your eyes, you breathe in, exhaling through clenched teeth, "Stop assuming what I'm feeling, Commander."

"I’m not assuming." He draws nearer. "Tell me, why are you angry?" His deep laugh sends tremors down your column, evoking an abashed flush to heat up your face.

"Why do you care? It doesn’t affect my ability to do my job and it’s not something I’m inclined to share with my employer." Raising your chin to keep peering at Kylo’s visor, a feeble discomfort blooms on your neck, caused by the harsh position.

"Employer? I’m your master."

His enunciation of the word triggers a pause in your breathing, a few seconds passing before you reply, "No, you’re not."

"I could argue about semantics, but I won’t. You see, you don’t have any leverage to question my authority." His voice rings, indifferent. "I _am_ your master and you have disobeyed me. A sensible person would be regretful."

"I won’t regret disobeying an order I was never aware of. Maybe you should have told me what you expected before you _left_ ," you say, regretting your words as soon as they become sound.

“You should learn when to stop talking,” he seethes.

He steps forward, body moving with equal amounts of elegance and tension. As his chest heaves--the expanse of it never ceasing to amaze you--singed patches of his clothing split open a little wider, revealing the man underneath. His skin is tinged red, charred black with ashes, laved with jagged lacerations caked with grime. A wound still bleeds at his side, the liquid cascading and seeping under his robes.

How can still move like this, as if nothing is wrong, when his body is this battered? Your gaze flickers between each of his apparent injuries, mind wondering how many lost their lives in their futile struggle against him.

"Thirty-five."

A line creases between your eyebrows. "What?" 

"I’ve slaughtered thirty-five enemies of the First Order while I was away. They deserved it and I'd do it again."

A precipice opens in your stomach and your heart falls straight through it. You know--everyone knows--what the Commander’s purpose is. But you never had to deal with it before. Drawing in a sharp breath, you find yourself devoid of words.

He drawls, "It’s pathetic how they thought they could stand against me. Against the First Order. It was easy to fulfill their death wish."

Your mouth opens and closes as you try to form a comprehensive sentence. " _Why_? What is even the point, were they even a threat?"

"A threat? To me?" he jeers. "They had something I wanted, now it is mine."

"I can understand killing a Resistance fighter who’s engaged in an attack. But why murder people who pose no threat and would comply anyway?" you ask.

"I’ve done a lot more for a lot less." His laughter sways by you, a chilling breeze. “You should be prepared to kill for the First Order.”

"That’s not within my scope."

"Are you too good, too _pure_ to have blood on your hands?" he drawls.

Your lips draw into a tight line. "If I wanted to kill, I’d have chosen to work on the field. I didn’t."

"Do you still believe it mattered? Look around you, everything here is designed to kill." He runs his knuckles up the length of your arm. "Every choice leads to death."

"You’re wrong."

He laughs, running his thumb across your lower lip, teasing the flesh with the seam of his glove. "Fifty-two."

When you open your mouth to question him, he slips his finger inside, flattening your tongue. Your words come out garbled as you try to swallow around him. "Fuffhty-too waah?"

"It’s the number of people you’ve killed since the day you’ve started working under the First Order." He presses the digit further, reaching the sensitive area at the back of your throat. "You may want to rethink your demented idea to bite me."

The Commander withdraws his thumb, wiping the wetness on his robes.

"That's _not_ how it works," you counter, drying your chin with the back of your sleeve. "I never killed anyone. I've worked to make starships safer for our pilots-"

"Allowing them to keep killing. Should I explain what my pilots do on their missions?" he mocks.

"How can you trace those deaths to me?" you press your lips together in a tight line.

Kylo traces a pattern on your neck, your pulse fluttering under his touch. "I don't get you." He rakes the pads of his fingers down your chest, digging into your skin and stopping at the waistband of your uniform. "There's this unwavering passion about your work, yet you don't possess the same fealty to the First Order."

You shake your head, expression dulled. "No- that would be treason. I _am_ loyal to the First Order." 

"Then _why,_ " he slants his wrist, bringing the red, flaring plasma blade closer to your thighs, "do you not act like it?"

Your eyes flutter shut, muscles in your body seizing as you will them not to move an inch, lest you impale yourself on his lightsaber. Searing pain erupts in your head, as if countless needles are puncturing your brain. An unknown voice pervades your head with persistent suggestions: open your eyes, _open your eyes_ . Every nerve of your body threatens to shred apart.  
  
When your eyes blink open, you find that Kylo Ren’s face hovers inches away from yours. The red gleam from below casts an ethereal shine on the etchings of his mask. Yet all you see are the dried patches of blood splatters.

With a flick of his thumb he shuts off his weapon, the sudden darkness throwing you off and producing odd artifacts before your eyes. Blinking a few times to clear your vision, your stare lowers to watch his hand. Kylo clasps the lightsaber to the belt coiled around his thick waist. Something else catches your attention, the bulge straining against the fabric of his pants, formed into a tent.

Suppressing the thread of desire before it spirals out of control, you pound your fists into his solid chest. 

"What’s your _problem_? Do you get off on almost killing me every time we meet? Why not let the General execute me then?" you snarl, voice rising above the ambient cacophony. 

He remains unmoving. 

"I do. So do you. I know what keeps you awake at night. I've seen how desperate, lonely you are. Lost. Wanting answers no one gives you." Kylo coasts his knuckles over your chin, the tender, unexpected touch urging you to action again. 

It’s like trying to displace a marble statue. A useless effort. Splaying your hands on the expanse of his shoulders, you throw your weight forward, trying to push him away. The muscles on your forearms ache due to the impossible extersion. 

Kylo pinches one of your wrists between his thumb and forefinger, dragging your hand down his body and settling your tremulous limb at his throbbing erection. He tilts your wrist to trace the outline of his cock, while sweeping his thumb back and forth as he reaches the tip.

Your wide eyes are locked into the point where your bodies join. 

He squeezes his hand and yours, pressing down on his shaft. "I've seen what goes through your mind when no one else is there. I feel it too."

"No, you don’t," you whisper.

"Stop talking." Kylo bucks his hips, thrusting up into your hands. He leans forward, bending to be at your eye-level. "I've studied you. Stellar record, an ascending career. To throw that away in a single day… fascinating."

"My decision shouldn't have led to this outcome in the first place. I'll make it through. I'll finish my assignment and will have no other use for you, Commander." You press your back further into the panel behind you.

"You fear a lack of purpose. There's more than one way to serve me." He splays his free hand over your sternum, pinning you down to the point of discomfort.

"Go. Fuck. Yourself," you rasp. 

"Your mistake is killing you… living with the perpetual fear that you're subpar." He rakes his thumb across the length of your neck, pressing it against the soft flesh at the bottom of your throat. "So desperate for any crumb of praise."

"That's not true," you whisper, eyes flickering to the mangled door.

"Is it not? You don't ever want me to tell you how _good_ you've been for me? For your _master_ ?" he grunts. "You don’t want to hear that your work is _outstanding_? That you’ve made a difference?"

You pupils blow out, encroaching your irises. "Never."

"Stop denying your true wishes." He grasps your other wrist, bringing your hand to cup your aching cunt. "Don’t you want to cum for me?"

"Fuck you- ah!" Faster than you can process, his hands snap to your hips, yanking your pants down, uncovering your skin to the stale, cold air.

"You will tell me what you want," he drawls, whirling you around and pinning your body on the transparisteel pane. Kylo's thumbs dig into the soft flesh of your lower back, sculpting bruises. 

"Touch me. Make me cum. I've wanted it for so long."

"How does some _honesty_ feel for a change, officer?" Kylo coasts the seams of his glove over the curve of your ass, evoking goosebumps that spread down your legs. "Let's keep going. This is where you come to escape from me. Your little sanctuary."

You shake your head. "No- I come here to clear my mind."

"I will ruin it for you. Whenever you come here, you will remember this. Will remember _me_.” Kylo angles his hips, sinking into your warmth with ease. "You get tighter when you’re angry. I prefer you this way."

"Fuck- you... what have I ever _done_ to you?" Your words are cut short when his hand dives under your pants, bypassing your underwear and settling at your aching clit. Dragging your teeth across your lower lip to extinguish a moan, you’re pretty sure you’ve scratched a trail of red on your skin.

Contrasting your silence, Kylo lets out deep grunts, timed with blunt impacts of flesh hitting his own. When the pounding stops, he draws back his hand, robbing you of its heat. The resonant quietness gives way to the sound of rustling fabric, of leather coasting across a surface. He touches you again, spreading something warm and viscous over your cunt, leaving no portion bare.

_What’s this?_

Dropping your gaze to the floor, you notice fluid pooling beneath the Commander’s feet, thick and red.

As realization dawns, your heart stops, your blood now at the mercy of gravity. It pounds down your temples, strength draining from your muscles. "You’re a monster!" you screech.

"Yes, I am." He rakes his fingers across the space beside your head, painting a glistening, crimson track. That hand then circles your neck, keeping your face crammed against the window, forcing you to look at _it_. As he presses on the column of your throat, it numbs everything else but the feeling of being split apart by his cock.

"You seem to be enjoying the monster," he pants, the artificial thrum of his voice tickling the shell of your ear.

Banging your fists on the transparisteel, you scream with frustration at how right he is. Your palms slide up and down over the flat surface, as you yearn to hold onto _something_. "I fucking hate you!" The words escape you with no small effort, struggling against the unforgiving grip on your windpipe. 

"Good." Kylo bottoms out and his shaft bobs against your drenched heat. He sheathes inside again, digging his fingers into the pliant flesh of your hips to keep you in place. A groan leaves his mouthpiece as he pushes through the desperate fluttering of your cunt. Your walls squeeze him tighter and tighter by the second, preceding your oncoming orgasm. 

Squeezing your throat harder, he waits for you to convulse around him, cunt throbbing desperately, before he lets off his grip. 

The restoring circulation aches beneath your skin, heating you up as it flows across the length of your neck.

He pulls back, leaving the tip of his cock inside, teasing your entrance. "Why did you disobey your superiors that day?"

"I-" A gasp pushes past your slackened mouth when he withdraws, tormenting you with the now unwanted emptiness. "Shouldn't you know this already?"

Kylo hums, a single baritone note echoing on his throat. "I do." He kneads the yelding flesh of your inner thighs, prying them apart. "But you will tell me anyway."

You grind your jaw, hoping you can choke on your words and remain silent. An unseen force compresses the area below your cheekbones, increasing its intensity the longer you refuse to speak. You begin to hear a sickening ‘pop’, mouth then falling open in compliance. "I did it because it was my duty. To the software, to ensure that every pilot has a safe, reliable, efficient system. The code's quality shouldn’t be compromised due to politics. Not when I could fix it."

For an instant your legs quiver, knees on the precipice of giving out when the Commander thrusts as deep as he can go. He educes bruises on your skin, clawing into your soft flesh as he grinds your pelvis back and forth. Kylo yanks his cock out, making you clench over nothing. Without giving you a moment to process this sensory overload, he pummels into you. He moves with such force that you can feel each ripple that crosses your skin as his hips snap against your ass.

A choked cry shreds its way out of your throat, cunt clamping around him and releasing another wave of ecstasy. Your eyes squeeze shut, closing you off in darkness, even so constellations bloom behind your eyelids, swirling and pulsating in abstract bursts of light.

He slaps the visible patch of skin at the side of your thigh. "Keep your eyes open."

Pain scorches at the site, spreading through your leg like fire. You falter, stumbling forward and bracing your forearms against the panel, resting your forehead on the cool surface. Opening your eyes, you find yourself blinking, overwhelmed by the sudden surge of light, seeing amorphous, unfocused blobs clog your vision.

As it all comes into focus, you notice how the once transparent panel in front of you is now fogged with your labored breaths. You're struggling to keep quiet, swallowing each moan that threatens to spill out of your throat. His cock fills you in a way you could have never conceived, every twitch of his shaft, every slight motion of his hips draws out new tremors of euphoria. Maybe you’re mishearing it, but a low, crackling dissonance emanates from his mouthpiece in the same rhythm in which he now plunges into you.

"You ’re too caught up in the details. You don’t _see_ it," Kylo hisses, hands releasing your hips for a moment. He coils an arm around your waist, pinning your forearms to your sides and melding you to his chest. His other hand slithers up your spine, settling at the root of your hair. Then, he cants your head forward so you're forced to stare at what lies beyond the transparisteel.

"See what?" you grit out.

"What we’re working for. Every cluster of stars will belong to the First Order. Every system. Every planet. Everything will be _mine_ ," he pants against your ear.

The raw, frantic determination on his voice strikes like lightning throughout your body. It electrifies the almost unbearable delight in your core, cracking the brittle hold you had on your orgasm. You release a broken string of curses, crying out every expletive you know when you feel the dazzling pleasure soaring across the breadth of your skin.

Kylo flexes his forearm, squeezing your body tighter under his grip. His other hand clasps the underside of your jaw, nudging your face on the crook of his neck. The edge of his helmet digs into the column of your throat, indenting lines on your skin. "Keep tightening around me," he snarls. "So desperate... cumming for the man you hate."

You wish you could fire back a scathing reply, but instead you’re trapped in a resolute effort to let your climax wash over you without displaying a reaction.

To no one's surprise, you're failing. 

His thrusts falter, losing any sense of predictability. Slowing down, he snaps harder against your body, spitting out curses, voice cracking for the first time, "How can you get any fucking tighter?"  
  
Walking forward, he pushes you against the window. The transparisteel panel is almost indestructible, yet you fear it will shatter at any moment, you swear it's shaking just a little. He groans your name, spilling his release deep inside your cunt. Still, Kylo doesn't stop, fucking through his orgasm, mask tilted down to watch his load spill out of you, lathering his shaft as well.

When he eases the hold around your jugular, your exultant soul returns to your body, orgasm winding down. Blood pounds against your temples as normal circulation resumes. Your head lolls against his shoulder, eyes shuttering close.

You’re not feeling your legs by the time he pulls out, almost crumbling to the ground, kept standing by his arm hooked around your hip. He redresses you, ensuring your pants sit tight against your body, keeping his the remnants of his cum inside you.

Stepping back, you’re met with slaughter. Congealed bloody fingerprints are scattered on the window, with red tracks streaking across the transparisteel. You rest your palm on the flat surface, marvelling at how the evidence of Kylo’s hand spans a length far larger than yours.

Kylo unfolds his cowl from around his neck, hurling it in your direction. "Clean up."

You swirl the thick fabric between your fingers, quite liking the texture of it. Fighting the urge to bring the material to your face, you blot at the crimson blemishes on the visible portions of your skin. Next you pat your hands dry, mind pondering what it’d feel like to cuddle the garment as you lie down in bed. When you finish, you hand it back to its owner, drawing your lower lip between your teeth.

The Commander wraps the cloth where it belongs, tugging at the edges to ensure it will remain in place. His cape sways to the side as he adjusts his belt. A gleam of silver catches your eye, attuning your gaze to a dagger that is clipped beside his lightsaber.

_Huh, that seems kind of useless…_

Without another word, he steps out onto the corridor and you trail after him, eyes trained on his boots. You’re confused as to why the hallways are so empty at this hour, especially given it’s near to the afternoon shift change. After a few minutes, a third ser of footsteps end the blunt silence, arising from the other end of the corridor. A stormtrooper approaches, visor turned in Kylo’s direction, their posture rigid, moving with less fluidity than a droid. They carry a helmet under their arm, an all too familiar one.

Kylo Ren stops walking, almost causing you to collide with his back. Shuffling to the side, you frown as the trooper draws closer to you. To your bewilderment, they stop in front of you. Both you and the now fidgeting soldier are aware of Kylo’s suffocating presence, half expecting him to activate his lightsaber at any moment. 

"Commander Ren, sir," the trooper greets. Their head bobs up and down as their gaze flickers from Kylo to you. "Officer, I was instructed by General Hux to deliver this equipment."  
  
They hand over the helmet to your trembling hands, wasting no more time in retreating as fast as possible without breaking into a sprint. When you turn the equipment around to get a better grip, a fob drops to the floor, activating itself. It casts a small blue hologram, displaying a miniature of a man you had grown to despise.

_It has been brought to my attention that you were lacking a mandatory portion of your uniform. I am aware that due to certain constraints, you are unable to solicit another. I have taken the liberty to do so, as a gesture of goodwill._

_I trust you to take better care of it._

End of message.

The words sear in your brain, sending flares of dread across your skull. Breath shrivels in your lungs, every fiber of your body aware of the way Kylo Ren tenses beside you. A tumble of footsteps echo to your right as he circles you, fists clenched. His cape shifts with his movements, swaying like wings of an enormous vulture.

Moving your limbs is no longer an option.

“Commander, I-” you begin, using the only outlet still available.

"Drop it." His voice is flat and unemotional, fading into strangled silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am off to sleep. I've been blown away by the response to this fic, it's been such a blast to write it and if I may say so, to notice some improvement here and there. Also totally not projecting stuff, haha, just kidding, unless...
> 
> Well, I'm always eager to hear your thoughts, predictions, reactions anything, it truly makes my day to get an AO3 email on my inbox :)


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